No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) (17 page)

The rock’s
surface rippled and expanded quite rapidly, forming into a slender-looking
spike that pierced the assistant’s arm.

He
screamed and fell, snapping the growth as he toppled. I was the first to reach
him and the wound did not look so bad at first; simply a clean stab, mostly
through muscle and flesh. I stripped his sleeve away, no longer caring about
damned protocols, and saw what was happening underneath.

Black
threads like necrotized veins were spreading outwards from the wound. One broke
the skin and reached for me. It
reached
for me and I flinched back,
scrabbling away on my hands and knees like a crab.

The
assistant went into convulsions, his feet beating out a mad staccato on the
floor. His back arched, and I heard something snap and then grind together as
he shook spastically.

Osif took
me under the arm and lifted me up, pulling me into a run towards the door.
Behind us, the rock was growing more spines, perhaps seeking the rest of us. We
sealed the door, leaving the poor unfortunate inside to his fate.

I know how
fantastical this will sound to you, Maria, but it is the truth.

An hour
ago, we three met again, still shaken by what we’d seen. I suspect this was the
event the Institute referred to when they spoke to Medvedev. It had likely done
something similar in its previous place of confinement. I say ‘confinement’
because one does not confine a rock. One does, however, confine a living
creature, which this thing most assuredly was.

The island
was evacuated, while we decided to remain. We had a duty to see it through,
Maria. I am sorry for it.

“If we get
back inside, what in hell’s name do we do about it?” Osif asked. It was a
practical question not easily answered.

“Can we
kill it?” My hands worried against each other between my knees, and my neck
felt tense. killed.”

“We don’t
even understand it,” Medvedev said. “But it’s alive, so I imagine it can be
“It’s not from our biosphere. What could kill it?” Osif asked.

“It’s
organic…at least, it has to be,” I added. “We’ve seen it react in such a way.”
“Fire should do it,” Osif reasoned. “It ends most things.”

They went
to the stores, looking for chemicals with which to incinerate what lay within
the lab.

My left
hand had balled into a fist and it would not unclench. I had to pull the
fingers apart; a nest of black veins had taken root in the palm of my hand,
similar yet different from what I’d seen in the lab. They were tinged with red,
pulsing along my fingers and down my wrist to my arm.

Maria, I
will not see you and the children again. I will finish what was started with
the assistant in the laboratory.

I will try
to be firm. I must be firm.

2014

The room
David found himself in was strewn with fragments of people’s lives. Smashed
cell phones, torn pieces of clothing and other things spotted with dark stains.
It put him in mind of a slaughterhouse, which was no doubt the desired effect.

“Who are
you?” He’d read somewhere that getting to know your captor, however little you
managed, could make a difference.

“I had a
name. A girl used it once, but I can’t really remember it. Not since the fire.”
“You’ve been here since then?”

The
tattooed man didn’t answer, but stopped, bent down, and picked something up
from off the floor. David recognized the phone, shattered screen and all. He
wondered if his last message had delivered to it first.

“I
remember this one, it was only tonight.” He offered David a sympathetic smile.
“You’re lucky he sent me back out to the city. He said I did such a good job.”

The room
was badly lit and most of it was shrouded in shadow, but David felt something
moving in the darkness past where he stood. The air seemed to displace as if a
large presence was settling itself down, though he heard nothing.

His captor
forced him to his knees, slicing with the knife in quick, economic strokes.

David’s
coat and shirt fell in pieces on the floor, mixing with the other shreds of
former people brought here before him. When the knife came back up, it sliced
quickly into the side of David’s face, leaving a neat line along his cheek.

“I told
you, he likes to taste first.”

David
couldn’t see anyone else in the room with them; he wondered if the man was
going to taste his blood himself. Instead, he turned and walked towards the
wall, where the shadows gathered thickest. David watched as he held out his
hand to the darkness, and then caught a sound like sucking.

“What do
you think?” The tattooed man paused, as if he could hear an answer David
couldn’t. “What?” Another pause. “No, no, you promised…I don’t care if you need
him,
I
need him more!”

The blade
flashed once, but never connected with whatever was in the shadows. Instead,
something struck the man’s head from his shoulders with barely any sound save
for a quiet crunch as the bone and muscle were separated. The knife fell
somewhere, clattering to the ground and bouncing out of sight. The man’s body
tumbled limply without so much as a jerk or convulsion.

David
thought about getting up, but couldn’t. He realized his crotch was warm.

I
haven’t pissed myself since I was a kid,
he thought in a detached way.

He’d not
really thought the man was talking to anything, despite the feeling that there
could be something there in the darkness. Maybe he was sharing some of the
now-dead man’s madness, if that was possible.

Whatever
it
was, it slid from its place and stepped forward. It was almost silent and
seemed to drift rather than walk towards him.

David
looked once, wishing he wouldn’t, but the desire was too strong. Its skin had
the texture of flaky pastry, and it was the color of turned milk and riddled
with black veins underneath. Much of its face was hidden by the shadows near
the ceiling, but its head bobbed as it walked.

Its eyes
were the most terrible thing. Its eyes
saw,
and they wanted. More than
that, David realized they were
his
eyes. Even in the brief moment he’d
seen them, he knew it. The same color and unusual misshape to the left pupil.

It stopped
in front of where David knelt, looming over him. It offered something that
could have been a smile, if not for the shape of its mouth and position of
teeth.

David no
longer felt afraid; he no longer possessed the capacity to feel anything beyond
what he wanted. The softer parts of his mind had burned away with the thing’s
approach; just a piece at a time, so he wouldn’t notice.

By the time he did,
the last little trickle melted away and he was left as Sasha – he knew the dead
man’s name now, and he knew more than that besides – had been. Only he would never
end up like him; family does not hurt family.

Otherwhere: initial concept

Otherwhere: study of ravens

Otherwhere: raven in the rigging

All We Have: character study

All We Have: concept