Chris Holm - The Wrong Goodbye

Shit. Looked like I was going to have to go in head-first.

The wall was damn near two feet thick. Chunks of masonry clawed at my clothes and skin as I scrabbled through the hole, leaving behind the subtle illumination of the canyon and plunging into darkness so complete I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face. Stone shards sharp as glass bit into my palms. Phantom colors danced before my eyes, blotches of blue and red and yellow-green. I clenched shut my lids, but the blotches remained. My meat-suit’s brain trying to make something out of nothing, I suppose. Not so different from how I’d be spending my eternity, if I didn’t track down Varela’s soul in time.

The wall ended. I spilled forward. A good ten feet of empty space, and then I slammed into the packeddirt floor. For a moment, I just lay there, struggling to reclaim the breath that had been knocked from my lungs. Then I pushed myself up off the floor and took stock of where I was.

There really wasn’t anything to see. I mean there really wasn’t anything to see. The room I was in was windowless, and as dark as the hole through which I’d entered —I couldn’t tell if it was ten feet across, or a hundred. Somewhere in the darkness, water dripped, and the air was cool and damp, raising goosebumps on my exposed skin.

My hands splayed out before me like a blind man’s, I staggered forward, disoriented by the utter lack of light to guide my way. The ground was uneven, and scattered with detritus —the brittle crunch of paper, the ankle-rolling clink of glass vial against glass vial. Occasionally, my way was barred —the cold iron of an ancient boiler, which reeked like blood and rust; the dry creak of old bed-frames, their springs whining in protest as I shouldered a stack of them and nearly sent them crashing to the ground —and I was forced to feel my way around. The going was slow and laborious, and despite the cold, an acrid sweat sprung up across my face and neck —sweat borne of concentration, and of mounting fear.

As I plunged deeper into the dank basement of the sanitarium, I noticed something: a strange, thick, scratching noise like sandpaper against wet wood. I stopped and listened. The sound was rhythmic and oddly repellent, and for the life of me, I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Suddenly, though, I knew exactly what it was —my every muscle tensing as realization dawned.

It was breathing.

Breathing, but not human.

OK, I thought, no big. You’re just blind and defenseless in a creepy, creepy basement with what is almost certainly a big, scary demon. So what say we see about leaving said basement before big, scary demon decides to earn that big and scary.

I forced myself to take one step, and then another. It wasn’t easy. My meat-suit’s every instinct was leaning more toward curling up into a ball and crying. Of course, this meat-suit’s former occupant asphyxiated in his own home when all he had to do was crack a window, so as far as I was concerned, its instincts didn’t count for much.

I inched across the room, hoping to spy something that would signal a way out. My progress was so halting, and the room so very dark, that at times I felt as if I was walking in place. And all the while, the sickening sound of the demon’s breathing enveloped me, reverberating off the distant walls until it seemed to come from everywhere, and from nowhere at all.

My foot came down on something soft and slick and alive —arm or leg or fucking tentacle for all I knew —and it recoiled beneath me. I pitched forward, falling to the floor. My heart banged out a drum roll in my chest as a massive, unseen hulk shifted noisily beside me in the darkness. But then it settled down again into what I assumed was a skiminduced slumber, the awful meter of its breathing like the devil’s own metronome. And once I managed to stop trembling, I picked myself up off the floor and continued on.

At the far end of the basement was a staircase. Well, half of one, at least. The bottom five steps had rotted out, and the sixth, which spanned the space between the two supports at chest height, appeared to be on its way —it was spongy and smelled sickly sweet like fallen leaves after a rain. But at the head of the stairs was an open doorway, through which spilled the faintest hint of candlelight, so one way or another, I was getting up there.

I placed my palms atop the sixth step and pressed, testing to see if it would hold my weight. It sagged and crumbled like wet paper. I wrapped my fingers around the edge of the one above it and pulled until my toes lifted off the ground, and the wood began to crack. Not great, but good enough. The only problem was, I had no leverage —I’d left my sling back at the squat, but thanks to my tangle with the bug-monster, my right arm wasn’t of much use. And there was no way I was going to be able to hoist myself up there on the strength of my left arm alone.

After a moment’s consideration —and another few moments of trying to talk myself out of it —I decided I had no choice but to go back and retrieve a bedframe from the pile.

Back through the stifling darkness.

Back past that unseen thing .

With a steeling breath, I retreated from the faint illumination of the doorway above, plunging once more into the absolute black of the basement. The creature in the darkness shifted, and its breathing hitched and skipped —its sleep turning fitful perhaps as the skim left its system?

I did my best to ignore it. My best wasn’t very fucking good. Like trying to catch some Zs on an inner tube while the lifeguard’s screaming “ SHARK !", only maybe not as relaxing.

I found the bed-frames by pure sense-memory, all the while knowing when I passed them last, I’d been close enough to trip over whatever it was that slumbered beside me. I held my breath, lifted a bed-frame off the pile. Rusted springs shrieked like harpies. I froze, and my eyes clenched shut, some lizard-brain part of me seizing up as I waited for the killing blow.

It never came.

I turned and took a step, bed-frame in hand. My right shoulder ached like hell from the recent dislocation, the joint oddly loose and wobbly. At least I hadn’t disturbed the sleeping Whatever, I thought.

And that’s when everything went to shit.

A chitinous click beside me, a rustle like a snake uncoiling, and once more, the breathing hitched.

And then stopped.

And then sniffed.

I told myself that I was nuts. That I had to be mistaken. But there was no mistake. Silence, and then two sharp inhalations —rapid, regular —as though the creature was sampling the basement air around it.

Maybe it sensed an intruder. Maybe it was just hungry. But either way, I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around to find out.

I abandoned any pretense of stealth, my dress shoes clapping against the dirt floor as I sprinted toward the stairs. The bed-frame squeaked in time with every step, a vulgar parody of sensual passion. I didn’t have the time to find that funny. Behind me —hell, all around me —the darkness came alive with squirmy, whispery movement, as the creature behind me roused itself and unfurled.

Christ, how big was this fucking thing?

Demons come in all shapes and sizes, but most that interact with humankind at least loosely play by the rules of our physical world. If I had to guess, though, I’d say this fucker didn’t venture out of the Depths all that often, because whatever the hell it was, it resisted any kind of sense-making. It seemed to fill the darkness, to encircle me without actually giving chase; its size increased with every passing second. I could feel the strain of my poor meat-suit’s brain as it tried to make sense of the contradictory input it was being given. The sensation fell somewhere between migraine and amateur lobotomy.