Swords of Steel Omnibus

by Howie K Bentley et al.

  “Have you seen my son?” The woman asked me. Too dumbfounded to verbalize a response, I merely shook my head. Keeping my place in the diary, I thumbed back to the beginning, and my suspicions were confirmed.

  “The Diary of Mrs. Isabelle Gaffney” was inscribed on the inside cover in a beautifully written cursive. Quickly, I turned back to my previous spot in the book, and read the next entry. It was dated several days after those I had already read. It was also the final entry in the tome.

  August 27th, 1832

  Nathaniel’s visage has appeared in the mirror for the past several days. I cannot bear it any longer. These strange and torturous visions, products of my failing mind, will not end—my torment is unending. I fear my son is dead, and I can neither bear the agony of his absence nor endure the fantastical visions that wrack me without respite. I am damned; God forgive me for what I must do.

  Looking up from the pages, I stared coldly into the widened bloodshot eyes of Mrs. Gaffney. A spectre she may have been, but knowing this with certainty actually calmed me—as I have said, I feared no phantasm, no mere departed mortal spirit. She turned her back to me and slowly glided back down the hallway, footsteps again resounding. I followed her.

  As I trailed after the ghost of Mrs. Gaffney, the long and narrow hall seemed to stretch out longer before my eyes. This I attributed willingly to my hallucination, though truly, I had seen so many incredible and frightening things, I could not be sure. There were more portraits on the walls. The further down the hall I went, the darker my surroundings seemed to become, yet I was fully aware that the eyes of those depicted in the portraits were following me. I stopped only once, briefly, to admire a large painting of a lone figure standing in a forest clearing. Red eyes of wild beasts gleamed their hunger at the figure from between dense trees. A crude yet detailed and eye-catching painting it truly was.

  Darker still the hallway became, until I was blindly following only the sound of the footsteps. I heard the sound of a door creaking open and, in darkness, I followed the footsteps through it into what I deemed to be another room. All became silent save for an old clock which ticked away the seconds, the sound lulling me into a fleeting and uneasy calm. That momentary respite was quickly shattered by the resounding report of the door suddenly and without warning slamming shut behind me. Startled, I leapt forward several paces and bumped into something low and solid, though I could not tell what it was.

  The clock kept ticking, dully, rhythmically, and my pulse responded in a strange counterpoint, the pressure in my veins increasing dangerously.

  I was transported from mere discomfort to crippling pain in a matter of some few moments. My temples throbbed with agony, as if my skull were about to split. It was a rising crescendo of torment, the likes of which I have experienced neither before nor since. I was convinced, almost, that I might die of it then and there.

  I gasped, and breathing in filled my nostrils with the reek of death. Remembering, finally, the matches in my pocket, and shaking from the spiking agony that all but immobilized me, I retrieved them and lit one in front of my face, terrified of what I might find in the room around me. The absolute shock and revulsion I felt as I stood staring at the putrefied corpse of Mrs. Isabelle Gaffney, suspended from a ceiling beam by a noose around her neck, will forever be with me and will haunt my dreams.

  The match died, and I found myself in blackness again.

  The clock kept ticking. My head pounded, the pain hardly abating.

  In the dark, I struggled to slow my racing heartbeat. I fumbled with the matches, eager to light another. At long last, I stilled the shaking of my hands sufficiently that I could do so. I looked about me. This had been Mrs. Gaffney’s bedchamber, and chill of fear again gripped my spine—but why, now that the instant of terrible shock at seeing her rotted corpse was past? Gazing around by the flickering match-light, I found the room otherwise to be as expected. It was dusty and old, long untenanted by a living soul—a place of old death. But there was something… I suddenly realized the fear I felt was brought on by instinct, the source being my sense of proximity… I was not alone in the chamber of Mrs. Gaffney’s death!

  The match died.

  The clock stopped ticking, as if time were frozen, and I was abandoned to an eerie silence.

  I expediently attempted to light another match. Feeling only one left in the box, I removed it and struck it. I held it out in front of me, the orange flame flickering from my panicked panting.

  I spun around to the sound of light scratching at the door, as if a cat were on the other side, though the scratching was too high up on the door to be caused by a household pet. I took a deep breath, and attempted to calm myself in some measure. I would have reached out to open the door, but the sense of an alien Presence suddenly grew much stronger—terrifyingly so. I turned back to the room and to Gaffney’s hanged corpse, in time to witness grinning, ghastly lips lean in from the blackness into the light of my match and blow out the flame. In that very second, the face I saw was that of a ghoul. In its eyes I saw the entrance to Hell, and I stand amazed that the very fabric of my mind was not completely torn to fragments by the sight.

  All was instantly black around me as I fell to the floor, curling in on myself, screaming for the end of the nightmare. When I had then given over to fear, and was certain of my impending doom, there was… something. A shift? A ripple in the fabric of being? I do not know. I know only that in that moment, I was somehow transported. My fear turned into shock when I lifted my head, squinting in the brightness of full daylight, to find myself outside, out of the cursed house, in the center of a forest clearing. Tall, densely grown trees surrounded the clearing, reaching high toward white fluffy clouds that decorated a bright blue sky. The sun was shining, and for a moment, I felt a combination of confusion and relief.

  Much to my dismay, this was to be short-lived. As if fueled by the wrath of God himself, the clouds grew denser and darker, erasing both the sun and blue sky from sight. Thunder crashed sullenly, and rain soon followed. As if a great eclipse were in progress, the day grew dark… very dark, until the dense trees surrounding the clearing were themselves part of the blackness. The darkness, the cold and biting rain, the thunder, all seemed to bode further ill, and I paced about the clearing for a time, uncertain of anything.

  I failed to grasp the true nature of my situation until a myriad of glowing red eyes hungrily stared at me from within the darkness between the dense trees. I recalled the curious painting I had stopped to observe in that long ominous hallway, whilst shadowing the ghost of Mrs. Isabelle Gaffney. Only then did I comprehend my predicament as it truly was, both unbelievable and undeniable. I was in the painting!

  One may well speculate as to how powerfully I was affected by this realization, but foremost in my thoughts was the question of how I would return to the real world, or even if I would be able to do so. When dealing with matters of the supernatural or of an impossible nature, logical thinking becomes a tool without function or purpose. All I could do was simply pray that what I was experiencing was brought on by my perception-altering addiction.

  In my dire situation, I ran to a nearby tree and began to climb. The beasts began to emerge from the surrounding woods. They were unlike anything described in any dark, esoteric, or fantastical book I have ever read. Roaring and terrible, clearly both carnivorous and extremely hungry, these slavering, nameless creatures surrounded the tree I climbed with haste. I glanced down but a single time, and saw below me a sea of fangs, tusks, claws, and raven-black fur. Some of the beasts walked on all fours, while others were bipedal, but all hungered for my blood and eagerly waited below for me to fall.

  I climbed higher and higher. It was not long before the bipeds among them started climbing after me. The higher I climbed, the easier it became, to the point where branches became interlaced in front of me. Before I realized what was happening, the tree I was climbing had become a ladder. I looked above me to see that I was approaching a wooden ceiling with a squ
are entrance portal to which the ladder led. I hurried my climb, as the snarling nameless ones below drew closer. I struggled to move as fast as I could. As I approached the square entrance portal, I could feel the body heat of the nightmare creatures panting on my heels.

  With all dispatch, I climbed through the square portal. Shutting the door and locking the latch, I found myself back in the damned shadowed manse, but this time in what I could only surmise was the attic space. It was a barren room with no windows and a single small entry door. I allowed myself a moment to catch my breath and gather my thoughts.

  For a long while, I sat there in the empty musty room, contemplating my escape. Eventually I gained the courage to undo the latch to the small entrance and slowly open the door, justifiably fearful as to what I might find on the other side. It was really too much for me in my now-weakened condition: all that was before my disbelieving eyes was Void—blackness, an infinite abyss of nothing.

  “Hello?” I called out. The response was a never-ending echo that faded slowly but never quite vanished, becoming instead part of a faint murmur, as if all the words ever spoken were somehow echoing dimly in the endless blackness. My head swam with dizziness and vague memories of old quotations I had once read about staring too long into the abyss.

  I shut the door, and lay down on the floor of the attic. Exhaustion overtook me, and before I could stop myself, I was firmly in the arms of Morpheus.

  When I awoke, I was no longer in the attic, though my immediate environment was not obvious to me. I was no longer prone upon the floor; I found myself in a narrow bed. My head buzzed with the annoying headache of newborn sobriety, though I must say that it was a very welcome change from the horrendous intoxication I had induced in myself the day before.

  The room was dark, though inexplicably lit dimly by an unidentifiable source. On first glance, it seemed to be a child’s room. Colorful, playful wallpaper lined the walls and there was a feeling of calm in the room. Yawning, I swung my feet off the side of the bed.

  My ears became filled with the sound of crackling paper. Before I could even grasp what was happening, the wallpaper began rotting off the wall before my very eyes, revealing the drab, decaying walls beneath. Strange words, in a child’s writing, adorned them. The first one my eyes caught had been written in what appeared to be red crayon:

  “There is a monster under my bed,” it read. My eyes grew wide as a green scaly hand grabbed me by the ankle from under the bed and began ripping at my flesh. Whatever strange creature it was, it roared like bear, which shook the bed. With great effort, I freed my leg from the monstrous grasp and bolted for the door, abyss on the other side or not. I began laughing hysterically. It was rather an odd moment to find myself laughing. I believe it was the result of an irresistible fear slowly eating away at my sanity. A cold sweat ran down my brow as I giggled madly.

  Running through the door plunged me into blackness. My memory over events at this juncture now grows hazy. I remember falling forever into nothingness, as the ebon blackness of a great void closed about me. My screams were the only sound to be heard, echoing endlessly in all directions. Those echoes were the last thing I remember before waking to find myself here.

  Four padded walls and a ceiling; that is all I now know. I am being watched and I must conclude this narrative, before they realize I have scribed my account in my own blood upon the walls. They say I have become insane, but I know the truth. I myself was warned of the truth at the outset: “One man enters, naught but his shadow emerges….” It had been these very cryptic words of warning that drew my morbid curiosity to that dilapidated dwelling, and now as I have discovered, the selfsame words that foretold my present misery. I am the mere shadow of a man, and the path of the shadow is one of no return.

  Darke Manor, as I have recounted, is not a place for the faint of heart or spirit, for its horrors are strange and terrible. Experiences such as mine may seem impossible, and I must say that I scarcely believe them myself, as my sanity is now in question. I know not the line betwixt fantasy and reality anymore, and perhaps the events I have described truly were chemical visions or the fabrications of a diseased mind. In the end, it is only my word, and there is no proof to be found.

  If any lesson might be learned from my sorry tale, it is only this: tempt not the impossible, for if you do, the impossible materializes and hunts its prey—it will find you, doubt it not. Do not seek to discover all that lives in the world of shadow, for there is a price: you will walk, as I now must, forever in shadow.

  The Key

  By Mike Browning and D.M. Ritzlin

  Before I attempted to operate the time machine, I sat back and reflected on how I got to this point and all the strange things that happened in sequence to bring me to where I now am. It all seemed so prearranged; but how could it be, since I was about to change everything? If this piece of alien machinery really did work the way I thought it would, I would become the first person in known history to successfully travel through time. I, Dr. Allen William Magus, would go back to the beginning of Christianity. I planned to arrive at the time when its influence took hold and changed the calendar to what was commonly known as AD or Anno Domini (but is now After Death). That is when true corruption took over and began to control the masses, and it is how we ended up in World War III with religions competing for domination of the world. No one saw it coming until it was too late. The Christians against the Muslims against the Buddhists. Yes, even a sect of Buddhists involved themselves in the holy holocaust. Each religion battling for supremacy over the others, all in the name of a God of Peace!

  The governments let it all happen. It was an amazing form of population control that put the mighty exactly where they wanted to be. The people, obeying the edicts of their own religious leaders, destroyed each other with the help of a government-created war plague. They released clouds of radiated gasses into the atmosphere. It spread relentlessly and caused global chaos. Nearly two-thirds of the population of Earth was destroyed in a matter of weeks. I will never forget the sight of swollen bodies infested with radioactive roaches, their bright green glow illuminating the night. People tried to crush the things, but it was no use, for they were burned to the bone by the bodily fluids of the horrible vermin. There were millions of them everywhere, feasting on whatever was left.

  I was very fortunate. In my older years I’d bought a nice secluded piece of land that included a small hill with a cave underneath. I used the cave as my private laboratory to conduct various experiments of unusual nature. Solitude was a necessity as I could no longer tolerate my meddlesome colleagues. I made the cave into a nearly impenetrable fortress, so when the chaos hit, I was ready. There was just enough time to seal myself inside before the nuclear gas attack occurred. I spent weeks holed up in my lair, waiting for the deadly gasses to subside. My fortress offered me sanctuary not only from the poisonous vapors, but from any religious maniacs, government officials, or atomic mutants who would want to harass me. In order to take my mind off of the world’s terrible doom, I put myself to work. I spent that time building myself a protective whole-body garment that functioned as a much more advanced type of hazmat suit. It would shield me from just about anything that was left out there—or so I thought!

  The United Nations seized control of what remained of the world’s governments. Their reign didn’t last long.

  Not more than a month after the initial release of the nuclear gas strain, a huge alien spacecraft appeared in our atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean. Within hours several smaller droid ships were spewed forth from the huge mothership and began a mass decimation of what was left of this poor planet. This was now a true war of the worlds. We were too devastated to fight back and although we did try, it looked hopeless. We had no idea what we were up against. We didn’t even know what planet the invaders came from. I presumed they were from another galaxy.

  Battles raged above the planet between the droid ships and the meager air forces of Earth. Missiles and laser beams streak
ed across the sky, causing such annihilation that it seemed as though the very heavens would crumble. Earth scored a minor victory in a skirmish not far from my fortress. One of the smaller droid ships had been shot down and crashed right on the other side of my hill, so after the battle I donned my protective suit and went to investigate the wreckage. I thought if there was hope for Earth’s survival, it would be on that ship. Perhaps I would find a weapon we could use against them.

  Crossing the short distance to the ship safely was no easy task. I took great pains not to step on any of the hundreds of radiated roaches skittering across the rocky terrain. One wrong move and I would crush one of them underfoot. My protective suit might have been strong enough to prevent their acidic juices from burning me alive, but I didn’t know for sure. I didn’t want to find out the hard way. I moved slowly in trepidation. Some of the horrible things crawled over my body and I had to pick them off with great caution.

  As I approached the smoldering crater where the ship lay, I saw various mechanisms clearly of unearthly origin strewn about the wreckage. The largest one was of humanoid shape, which I deduced to be the ship’s robot pilot. It was made of a surprisingly lightweight metal, the likes of which I had never seen before. Implanted it its chest was a strange glowing symbol which upon further examination I determined to be its power source. The symbol immediately struck me as having some kind of mystic significance, although its specific nature was beyond the limits of my knowledge. I have dabbled in occultism, but it is not one of my main areas of expertise. I proceeded to dismantle the ship and searched for any salvageable parts. Due to the lightness of the material, I was able to carry a good amount of it. I headed back to my cave fortress as quickly as I could. More droid ships might appear in the sickly yellow sky at any time, and I wouldn’t want to be caught out in the open should such an unfortunate event occur.