Tentacle Death Trip (16 page)

“What the hell?”
he said, his jaw dropping in glassy shock. In the center of the courtyard was
large stone slab and on top of it was a gigantic flower made of flesh and feces
that shimmered with a
brunneous
glow.

The courtyard
itself was as at least two miles long. The sky was barely visible above because
of the thick, ugly clouds that were filling in quickly. In addition to the
fecal-flower, there were hundreds of other organisms
Drac
could not identify. Some were similar to flowers but with an added form of
abnormality: flat tendrils instead of leaves, throbbing thorns leaking neon
poison, gaping mouths filled with more gaping mouths, leafy blobs hanging from
obsidian obelisks.

Drac
and Samson kept driving through the bizarre foliage,
their cars tearing fishy vines and smashing through organisms that resembled
sunflower-jellyfish hybrids. Oceanic gore splattered their windshields. The
moldy floor of the courtyard slowed them down and as they kept driving, they
felt like they were losing ground instead of gaining it.

From out of the
stone slab came a plethora of black tentacles. They grabbed onto
Drac’s
car and wrapped around it like a greedy child
holding a treasured toy.

“Son
of a bitch!”
Drac
yelled, trying to gain
focus, trying to turn the situation to his advantage. He was being overpowered
by tentacles while his own were impotent. The irony wasn’t lost on him. He
swerved the car, trying to get it out of the monstrous grasp.

Samson’s car had
already swerved away to avoid being a target but the moldy ground made his car
swerve and eventually swung in a circle until it was facing
Drac’s
car.

The convertible
top was pulled off
Drac’s
car and a tentacle dove
into the backseat, tearing into the bottom of the car. Then it stopped.

Drac
grabbed his gun and was firing at the tentacles but
then realized Samson’s car was right alongside him again with the blowgun on
top of it firing away.

Samson was helping
him.

VII.

Samson didn’t give a shit about the race. He saw the
tentacles attack
Drac
and the move to help him was
instinctual. He wondered if that’s how it felt to be in combat alongside
someone you didn’t like. They had a common enemy in Silver so why
shouldn’t
they team up?

He navigated his vehicle so he was close to
Drac
and then used his blowgun on the tentacles. There was
no way of knowing if the needles would have any effect on them but it was worth
a try. But they weren’t giving up.
Drac’s
car was
being torn to shreds while it sped through the courtyard.

Samson decided to take a chance and try something risky. He
let go of the blowgun trigger and leaned over to open the passenger door with
his right hand while steering the car with his left. He was hoping
Drac
would see him and now what he intended to do.

Drac’s
glass skull turned and his eyes met Samson’s. Then
Drac
grabbed his large, white gun.

VIII.

Drac
started firing.

The tentacles shook at every blast, not letting go but
still giving him just the few seconds he needed to get a grip on his car and
jump over to Samson’s.

It wasn’t an easy task.
Drac’s
spiked shoulder pads and purple cape made it quite difficult to safely jump
from one moving car to another. It was a stunt only seen in one’s imagination.
People didn’t really do that in real life.

But
Drac
did it.

He surprised himself. The top half of his body fell right
onto Samson’s passenger seat and his right hand gripped the open door. His legs
dangled, scraping the moldy ground, sending up bulbous spores that crackled in
the air.

Samson hooked his arm under
Drac’s
and started to pull him in. A tentacle wrapped around
Drac’s
feet, squeezing his thighs until he screamed in high-pitched agony.

A blast from Samson’s gun blew the tentacle apart, allowing
Drac
to pull himself up into the car.

“Holy shit.”
Drac
didn’t know what else to say. The rescue had been
unexpected.

“Yeah,” Samson said. “You got that gun, you should use it.”

Drac
hadn’t realized he still had the gun in his hand. He put
his arm out the window and fired at the tentacles that were waving in their
direction. He watched his car veer off to the right and crash into a pile of
red, bulbous skulls that screamed on impact.

Samson maneuvered the car away from the tentacles, circling
around other strange looking plant life and toward an exit underneath a stone
arch made of green stone and into more darkness. The windshield fogged up and
the headlights of the car did nothing to penetrate the black.

As they drove through the nothingness,
Drac
said, “Thank you.”

Samson nodded.
“So what now?”

“I don’t know,”
Drac
said. “I
doubt we’ll get out of here alive.”

“Yeah.”

Drac
looked around at the dashboard and then started to run his
hands across it while Samson steered blindly.

Finally, Samson said, “You looking for something?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re rubbing the car like it’s a woman.”

Drac
quickly took his hands away but was still looking at the
dashboard with his eyes wide open. “There’s something familiar about this car.
I don’t know what it is. I just feel like I’ve seen it before.”

“Yeah?”

“Where’d you get it?”

Samson turned the steering wheel right, seeing if perhaps
there was a path out of the darkness. But there wasn’t.

He said, “It’s a long story.”

“So?”

Samson said, “Got it from a guy in
Dogunville
.”

“A guy?”

“Yeah.”

Drac
slowly extended his arm and put his hand on the steering
wheel next to Samson’s. He said, “Who was he?”

“I don’t know.
Some guy.”

“What was his name?”
Drac
said,
his high-pitched voice turning deep, guttural.

Samson tensed up, thinking it was a mistake for him to have
rescued the guy but then he realized
Drac’s
aggressiveness had nothing to do with him. “I think it was Simon…”

“Simon
what
?”

“Simon…
Revair
, I think.”

Drac
took his hand off the wheel and put it to his skull. The
gasoline inside him percolated, stirring up atoms of memory.

IX.

Samson saw a cut on
Drac’s
leg.
It was a bad one. He remembered when his son Jack was very young, how used to
run up to him after he had gotten hurt and say, “Daddy, I got a boo-boo!”
Samson would kiss it, tell Jack he would be okay, and then watch the pain
disappear from the boy’s face.

He wondered if
Drac’s
father ever
did the same. Thinking of that strange glass-
skulled
man as a child filled Samson with warm empathy and he was tempted to ask about
his childhood.

But there was no time for that.

The only thing Samson could think about was Jack. Where was
he? Was he okay? Was he even alive? Deep down Samson always thought he’d find out
what happened to his son and that it would make him feel better, give him some
closure. Even if he found out Jack was dead, at least he could feel relieved
the boy’s pain was over.

What if he was still alive? What if he was being abused?
Was he in
R’lyeh
? Samson had to know. He
needed
to know. He would prefer to mourn
his son and not agonize over the unknown tortures the boy might be enduring.

The unknown was terrifying.

He saw
Drac
enraptured in deep thought, his eyes glazed over and
his hands trembling on his lap. The death race had taken its toll on both men.

And who exactly
was that Simon
Revair
man whose name made
Drac
respond
with such horror?
Samson remembered him only from the construction of his car but even that
memory seemed to be made of the same thing as dreams.
Revair’s
face changed in his mind, dropping off like a loose mask while another took its
place. Samson realized he probably would not be able to pick the man out of a
crowd. The memory had been contaminated by time and perhaps…something else.

X.

Ten Years Ago

The Church of the
Starry Engines always held their meetings in a disused storefront, an anonymous
room with wooden tables and wicker chairs. Maps, both new and old, covered two
of the walls while primordial sigils were scrawled on the others.
Constellations of mud and scum covered the ceiling.

The congregation
settled in, sitting in the chairs and on the floor which was stained with motor
oil, antifreeze, gasoline, and blood. The whole room stank of machine rituals
and primeval combustion.

An oil-slicked
prism sat in the center of the room, emitting pulses of energy that filled each
member of the congregation with dread and trepidation. But they did not mind.
In fact, they wouldn’t have it any other way.

A handsome man
with bright blue eyes stepped out from a shadowy corner. He had been there the
whole time, biding his time, meditating on the future of his group, of his
church, of his people. His heart revved like an engine, his mind became a
turbine of ancient power. Through his veins flowed the blood of a thousand
mechanical horrors, ageless and brewing with hatred for the human race that has
infested the earth like fragile insects.

The man walked up
to the prism, stuck out his quivering tongue, and licked the fluids off. He stared
into the crystal, saw countless years of fallen stars being constructed into
automotive blasphemies, and fell into a trance.

He chanted and the
congregation chanted.

He raised his
hands and the congregation raised theirs.

This man, Simon
Revair
, pastor of the church, took hold of the prism and
held it above his head. He instructed a member of the congregation to get his
tools. It was time to get to work.

It was time to
reconstruct the ancient machine which would raise its home from the depths of
the sea. It would take a decade and there was much more to do but it would be
worth it.

Simon
Revair
sighed in near ecstasy. Oh yes, it would be worth
it.

XI.

“What’s wrong?” Samson said.

“I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel…..right,”
Drac
said, holding his arms down, feeling the vibration of
the engine and looking out into the darkness.

Then: light.

It came instantly, an abrupt flash of yellow that brought
them into the sunlight. They drove into a walled enclosure at least three
square miles, with looping stone roads rising and falling like a holographic
puzzle.

There were a myriad of choices of what road to take but it
didn’t seem to matter. Samson couldn’t see any way of getting out. As his eyes
followed one of the roads that rose to the sky, he saw that it ended in a
spiral. It was a corkscrew horror covered in a group of winged creatures that
looked like flying lobsters.

There were other flying things. Orbs that looked like black
suns made of meat.
Crab-like triangles with thin, pink
tentacles.
Headless faces floating around blobs of smoke.

Drac
groaned. “Something’s wrong.”

“Yeah, I know. Look at those things.”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean…..”

Samson looked over at
Drac
who
was staring down at himself. Something
was
wrong.
Drac’s
arms were started to melt into the car seat, his skin melding with it.

“Holy shit,” Samson said, as he drove the car up one ramp
and onto a stone road that twisted into unbelievable angles. He felt his hands
tingle and saw the flesh on his fingers drop and become one with the leather
steering wheel.
“
Goddamnit
.”

He tried to take his hands off the wheel but they wouldn’t
move.

He tried to take his foot off the gas pedal but it wouldn’t
move.

“What the hell?”

“Just keep driving.”

Though he could feel the car’s speed and see the odometer
reach its limit, Samson saw none of the surroundings move in the appropriate
way. Everything stood still, every crystallized spiral, every fleshy black sun,
every
winged terror. They all stood as still as a
snapshot while the car’s engine roared forward, its wheels burning rubber on
the cold, green stone beneath it. The road was bringing them somewhere.