David Barbour - Shadows Bend

Howard concluded his fierce wrestling match by using the last iota of his brute strength to lift his odd man off the ground. He held him crushed to his chest in a bear hug, and when he felt something give in the shadow’s torso, he quickly stepped back, and like a weight lifter doing a clean and jerk, he hoisted the odd man up to shoulder level and shoved upward with all his might, impaling him on a low-hanging stalactite. He heard the sickening sound of crunching gristle, but what truly disturbed Howard was the fact that he could feel the vibration of the rock grinding through the odd man’s body. He let go and stepped aside, watching the odd man give a few weak twitches before he hung limp and his deadweight pulled him down to the ground, leaving the stalactite dripping his dark blood.

Lovecraft could not help but queasily watch the driblets of blood splash onto the shadowy form. Howard quickly lifted another large rock and brought it down solidly on the skull of the shadowy man. The dull explosive thud startled Lovecraft, bringing him out of his distraction.

Now the men turned their attention to the portal, which was more than half-open. Something was emerging from the other side, something oddly indistinct like the faces of the odd men. To Lovecraft, the thing had the appearance of a giant tentacle, like the monstrous appendage of a prehistoric sea creature oozing primordial slime. To Howard the thing was a gigantic black serpent with glistening scales. Both of them saw it slithering toward Glory’s still form.

“Glory! Glory!” Desperately, they called out to her to awaken from her trance, but she could not hear them. They rushed to her and grabbed her from either side, pulling her from the dark serpentine thing, but she was frozen in place. Now the dark tentacle suddenly sprouted other, smaller appendages, and these coiled around the two men, entangling them before they could disengage. In moments, they were gasping, their breaths crushed from their lungs.

The giant tentacle touched Glory’s body and then, instead of encircling her, it began to envelop her like a fluid. Had it begun at her head, it might have appeared to be a black oil dripping down her body, but it started at the bottom and crept upward in a spiral, tendrils sprouting the way pseudopodia of water stream out of a droplet blown in a heavy wind.

In a few moments, Glory’s entire body had taken on the black sheen of the tentacle. To Howard, she had become a statue covered in gleaming, black serpent’s scales. To Lovecraft, she appeared to have become infinitely faceted like the sculpted compound eye of a gigantic insect. The surface moved and pulsed as, inside, Glory somehow began to struggle. As the men watched, helpless, Glory began to squirm and twist inside her black shell; they could not imagine what agony she must be enduring, but her openmouthed scream was clearly visible, though covered in the faceted stuff that killed all sound. Glory’s struggle became more and more violent, and then, quite suddenly, the texture and color of her covering. changed. The form inside-they could not believe it was Glory-spun at an incredible speed, and then, as if the covering were the final stages of a chrysalis, it exploded away_ and what remained of the tentacle drew back in a sudden twitch that was clearly pain.

Glory stood there, covered in a grayish, gelatinous slime. Her eyes opened, and she blinked, still stunned by what had just transpired.

“Glory!” called Howard. “Glory! Wake up!”

She turned toward his voice. Her expression changed into one of recognition and then, unexpectedly, she smiled. It was a smile so out of place that it somehow undid all the terror of the moment, and both Lovecraft and Howard felt themselves suddenly full of hope and energy and life. The pulse of the Artifact behind her seemed to grow dull.

“Now!” cried Lovecraft. “The Artifact! Place it in the other slot!” Glory looked back in confusion, and then, with a visible act of will, she thrust the Artifact into the rough-hewn slot and violently averted her eyes when it exploded with an entirely different sort of light.

The Artifact’s cold light and the light surrounding the portal seemed to come from inside the cavern, but this light, which was warm and full of a living energy, clearly came from outside. It was sunlight or somehow born of the sun-and it blazed in not from the slot, but through the strange Stone-Age technology that the old Hopi and Anasazi had rigged over the centuries. The containers of fluid on the wooden tripods were aligned so that when the Artifact’s cold glow reached them, a beam of blue light shot out into the darkness of the cavern. And then, as if pulled in by the blue beam, a blast of yellow white light returned like an echo from the sun. It was blinding in an entirely different way: where the Artifact’s light was intrusive, their bodies welcomed this light, wanted to open up to it as if they were flowers in a field. As the light leaped from tripod to tripod, amplified each time, it also brought a dull rushing sound with it. When the beam touched the Artifact, the slot turned black and the Artifact fell out, having changed from its cold form into something bright and golden.

Now Glory thrust the new Artifact at the dark tentacle, which was already drawing back from the light, and the creature began to recede whence it came. It was ungainly now, like some appendage too large to carry its own awful weight, and it was too slow to pull back into the portal before the removal of the Artifact caused the doors to close.

Everything was still for a moment, basking in the new light. Fabulous colors shimmered through the cavern. Then, like a worm shriveling in the sun, the giant black tentacle thrashed violently about, snapping stalagmites and stalactites like so much tinder as the doorway grated on its hidden gears, and, deep in the stonework, an ominous rumbling sound began. The vibrations spread throughout the cave, gradually rising in volume as it reached a resonant pitch that shook the very air. Stalactites fell from the darkness of the cave’s roof like icicles in spring, some of them impaling the monster’s giant tentacle, causing it to thrash even more violently, spewing black ichor that sizzled where it touched stone.

Now that Glory was free and he could breathe once again, Lovecraft started the chant which he knew would seal the portal. The words rushed nearly unbidden from his lips, and the weird sounds, unintended for the human vocal apparatus, resonated through the cavern like animal noises and subhuman utterances, mixing into an insane gibbering noise. The sounds echoed in chamber after chamber as if it were a call being answered in kind, and each echo came accompanied with the noise of collapsing stone. The entire cavern was beginning to collapse.

“HP! We have to get out!” Howard motioned to the falling stone. He pulled Glory by the hand, and when he met resistance, he dragged her. “It’s all coming down, dammit!”

Again, the light changed, dimming, growing in intensity, dimming again as the tripods shook and then finally gave way. The cavern was plunged into blackness when the tripods collapsed, breaking the beam of light, and suddenly they were all blind, seeing only the purplish blobs of afterimages. For what seemed the longest time, they groped around until Glory located her flashlight and flicked it on to provide a pathetically weak light.

“Bob!” she called.

Howard appeared at her side. He took her hand for a moment, but didn’t know what to say. Before he could articulate anything, Lovecraft was there, shining his own beam at them.

“Do you recall the way back?” He shouted to be heard over all the echoes of the collapsing cavern.

Howard pointed, and the three of them ran toward the lake, splashing into the water as rocks and stalactites fell all around them. Behind them, in the blackness, the gate was buried for all time.