Whispers From The Dark (7 page)

Rick heard what sounded like paper being ruffled or pages of a book turning.

A moment later, when his captor started chanting rhythmically, Rick began to realize what was happening behind him.  At first he shook off the idea, it seemed too crazy to be plausible.  But after a moment, there was no question as to just what the man was doing.  Rick turned his head again, straining hard to see over his shoulder but having no success.

He thought about jerking his body to try and twist the chair but decided that even if he had the strength to do it, the chance of tipping the chair over and slamming his face into the concrete floor was too great to risk it yet.  And besides that, he wasn’t completely sure he wanted to see what was happening.

Long strings of words in another language filled the room, each round of foreign words punctuated by the man crying out “I offer myself to you.”

That decree itself was followed by the man grunting.  A wet sound, the sound of metal scraping rock, another groan.

The process was repeated three times, the man’s voice riddled with deep breaths and gaining in fervor as he went on.

“I offer this soul to you,” the man bellowed.  There was another sickly wet sound and a moan, and without seeing a thing Rick knew that James had just been killed.

Silence crept through the basement, only broken by the heavy breathing of Rick’s captor.

Then the smells came.

The homeowner started gagging at once, choking on the putrid stench of sulfur and shit, burnt hair and rotten meat.  Rick assumed that his blood had clogged much of his nose, but the smell was still almost unbearable and he fought back the urge to vomit.

A moment passed, and then Rick realized that the room was growing warmer by the second.  Sweat was beginning to pour from his pores as a low rumbling noise began to echo off the bare walls.  His heart began to race with panic.

The man was screaming with joy now.  “It worked!  I can’t believe it!”

“Get me out of this fucking chair, man,” Rick screamed over his shoulder.  “It worked, right?  You don’t need me!  Let me go, man!”

The man didn’t respond to the pleas.  He just continued with his jubilation, cackling like a madman as the smells grew stronger and the heat grew more profound.

The rumbling noise stopped suddenly and there was a split second of silence that was followed by an immense sucking sound, as if the room itself was taking a deep breath.  The sound was short lived, however, and ended as violently as the entire ordeal had begun.

A silent flash of heat and force erupted from behind Rick so powerful that it sent him flipping, chair and all, across the room.  For the first time that night luck blessed him, and when he slammed into the wall it was back first, shattering the chair and knocking the air from his lungs.  A black wave washed over him and he teetered on the verge of unconsciousness once more, fighting against it until he began to slip back into reality.

He tried to move but couldn’t - his vision had become a cloudy grey blur, able to make out indistinguishable shapes but unable to focus on anything. At the moment his hearing was the only sense that seemed to be functioning for him, and he heard the homeowner speak from across the room.

“It worked,” the man said.

The swarming sound of a million flies and bees replied, forming words from the hellish noise; a buzzing insect horde speaking with its wings.

“Yes.”  Was all it said.

“And…you can help me,” the man said.  There was hope in his voice.

Hope was also creeping into Rick’s limbs, as they began to respond to his desires.  His arms and legs were regaining feeling, and he pushed himself up onto his knees.

“It is not my place to help you.”  Each word came independent of the others, slowly fading in and then out of the constant swarming sound that was growing louder with each second.

Rick’s vision was clearing somewhat now, he was able to clearly see objects a few feet from him: the remains of the chair scattered on the floor, the baseball bat the man had discarded earlier, his own arms and hands.  But more importantly, he could see stairs leading up and out of this hell, beckoning for him from twenty feet or so away.

The man’s voice was pained now, panicked.  “But I want her back!  My money!”

“That is not my concern,” the swarm responded.

“Well what the fuck is your concern?”  The man screamed.  “I brought you here, I called for you, I gave you what I was supposed to, goddamn it!”

Agony coursing through his battered body, Rick grabbed the bat and leaned against the wall with his shoulder, sliding up it until he was standing.  He took a deep breath and forced himself to look toward the source of the conversation.

His vision still wouldn’t allow him to make out the smaller details, but Rick could see enough to know that that was something to be thankful for.

The homeowner was on his knees, staring up at a huge dark shape that spanned floor to ceiling.  It wasn’t human in shape; Rick could see no single arm or leg to speak of.

But even through his still blurred vision, he could see that it was pulsating.

Squirming.

And as it did, tendrils slithered out and then back into it, sometimes only one appendage emerging from its ever-writhing body, sometimes a dozen.  It was like a giant mass of worms or snakes all formed together to make this beast that had been called forth tonight.

Neither the homeowner nor the shape seemed to notice Rick as he crept towards the steps, still leaning against the wall for support.

“You think a few fingers deserves what you ask for?”  The swarming voice asked.

“Yes, damn it, I do!  And what about the man--”

“He was nothing.  He was mine anyway.”

“There’s another,” the man pleaded.

He turned his attention to where Rick had been tied and released a panicked whimper before scanning the basement.  As soon as the man’s eyes found his prey he leaped into action, making his way across the room in a half-run, half-walk.

A mere ten feet from the base of the staircase, Rick turned to face his attacker.  The man was scowling, staring at Rick with contempt.  His right hand was outstretched, brandishing a blood-soaked knife. Rick glanced to the man’s other hand and saw that three of the fingers were gone, blood pouring from the stumps where they had been.

Either the man didn’t notice the baseball bat or he didn’t think that it posed a threat, because he made no effort to dodge or block it as Rick swung it towards his head.

The weapon connected with a crack that echoed off the cinder block walls like a gunshot, the left side of the homeowner’s face caving into his head as he dropped to the floor. 

The stinking, squirming thing sprang into motion.  It lurched towards Rick, moving nowhere near as quickly as the man who had summoned it.

Rick flung the bat toward the charging beast and watched as the bat disappeared into the creature, absorbed into its writhing mass like a sponge soaking up water.  He pushed off the wall and stumbled across the floor, falling onto the stairs. 

Surprisingly, it was easier for Rick to crawl up the stairs than it had been to walk to them, and he was over halfway to the top by the time the thing reached their base.  He glanced over his shoulder and saw three of the worm-like tendrils emerging from the creature, snaking their way up the steps towards him.  The room filled with the sound of a million swarming insects.

He reached the top of the stairs and threw open the wooden door, looking over his shoulder to see the writhing mass struggling up behind him, its hideous body still close to the base of the steps but its tentacles mere inches from his foot.

Rick passed through the doorway, pulling himself to his feet as he did so.  He stumbled down a long hallway and into the living room.  The sight of the door he and James had entered the house by breathed new strength into his body and he crossed the room in a dash, flung open the door and ran outside.

It took Rick three long, quick strides to cross the porch and he leaped off it into the driveway, sucking the cool night air deep into his lungs as he hurried to his truck.

 As he opened the door, the thing charged through the front door of the house and the night filled with the stench of rotting meat and sulfur.  Rick jumped into the truck and turned the key.  The sound of the engine roaring to life nearly brought a tear of relief to his eye and he slammed the pickup into reverse and floored it, flying backwards down the long driveway.

Before he could reach the end of the drive the truck began to sound different.  At first Rick thought the engine’s low hum was changing somehow, but then he realized that it wasn‘t the truck making the noise.  It was the swarming, buzzing sound of insects that the hellish creature spoke with, so loud that they drowned out the truck’s motor entirely.

And now he could see them, too.

The back window of the pickup was filling with bugs.  At first he only noticed a couple in his peripheral vision, but second by second more were joining them.  There were locusts, bees, beetles, and hundreds of bugs he’d never seen before.    It was quickly becoming hard to see through them enough to make out the road behind him.

Panicked, he turned his head to use his side mirrors, but the windows on either side of him were filled with insects as well.  The windshield was covered too; the truck seemed to be cocooned by the things.

The pickup lurched to the left, tilting towards the driver’s side and then slamming into something.  With a frustrated scream, Rick dropped the transmission into drive, but the vehicle wouldn’t move.

The bugs began to flit out of the air conditioner vents and Rick tried to swat at them but soon the cab of the truck was alive with them.

Rick threw open the door, falling out of the truck and tumbling a few feet down a steep slope.

He glanced up at his pickup, still swarming with bugs.  He had driven it off the side of the driveway a mere five or six feet from the intersection with the main subdivision road and now it sat precariously with its rear end folded around a large oak tree and another tree on the driver's side of it, holding it from rolling down the mountain towards where he was now.

As he struggled to rise to his feet Rick felt something move below his hands.  He looked down just as the earth beneath him heaved and came alive with millions of worms.  They squirmed up through the dirt and fallen leaves for as far as he could see, the moonlight giving the teeming forest floor an even more hellish appearance.

He turned and began half-rolling, half-crawling down the mountainside, crushing the worms beneath him as he went.

Their manifestation was unending.  He had made his way barely fifty feet and was mired in the squirming horde, at least a foot or more deep now.  He was covered in a thick paste of squished worms, live ones sticking to the glue-like remains of their brethren and covering his body.  He could feel them in his hair and under his clothes.

He rolled to his butt and grabbed a small tree to try and pull himself up with.  He made it to his feet and tried to take a step but he was mired knee-deep in the rising ocean of worms; it was like walking through quicksand.  Almost immediately he lost his footing and fell face first into the earthworms.

Rick panicked, thrashing with panic and trying to rise up.  The squirming little things were trying to crawl into his mouth, his ears, anywhere they could.  Finally he managed to pull himself to a sitting position, gasping for air.  He could smell the rotten stink of the basement again, the stench filling his lungs an instant before he saw the monster moving down the mountainside toward him.

The worms were up to Rick’s armpits.  The weight of them all was crushing, making it hard to breath.  He tried once to move but didn’t have the strength to fight against their mass.

The stench grew stronger as the thing stopped a few feet from him.  The beast seemed to study him, the moonlight gleaming off its squirming body.

Each breath was a battle now, and Rick could feel himself losing consciousness.

The creature spoke but Rick couldn’t make out the words; all he heard was the insect-like drone buzzing inside his head.

He thought of Clarissa, and of Maggie.  She’d just learned to walk, and the image of her toddling proudly across the living room floor filled his thoughts.

He was unconscious when the worms began to bore their way into his flesh.

WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS

Solitude didn’t bother Cody; he’d spent practically all of his twenty-five years alone.  He hadn’t even shed a single tear when the human race came to an end five weeks ago.   

What did bother him was the ungodly stench that lingered in the crisp winter air, wafting its way through the entire town.  He’d noticed it on his last two trips into town, and although there were only a couple dozen homes within the vicinity of the house he’d claimed as his own, Cody knew it was only a matter of time before the stink of the bodies in those homes began to reach him.

 He had no intention of dealing with every corpse in the town, but the ones that were close to where he now lived had to be dealt with, and he had been dreading the task.  He'd been trying to put it off but the stench was becoming too bad.  The cold had prolonged their decomposition, but there was no way to procrastinate any longer.  He was used to seeing the bodies, but now he was going to have to touch them… move them.  He wasn't looking forward to it.  That was part of the reason he’d moved into the house he had taken as his own was the fact that it was an empty bank foreclosure, thus no corpses inside to contend with.  It didn't hurt that it was a hell of an upgrade from the small one bedroom house he'd been calling home before the world ended. 

He walked up the steps and onto the porch of the first house, slipping on the paint respirator he’d taken from the hardware store.  He pulled on the thick leather gloves, took a deep breath, and kicked the door hard just below the handle.  Immediately the stink intensified.  He was thankful he’d thought of the respirator; even with it on he could still smell the rotting bodies, and he hated to imagine what it would be like without it.