Nervous that the matches were overexposed to the soggy conditions, with quick anxiety, Emma shivered with unknown fright. She looked over her shoulder, yet neither a thing was in front nor behind, except for what had always been, skulls and bones up both walls from floor to ceiling, left and right, and front to back as far as she could see in along the catacombs.
Emma paused, her eyes wet and wide. She raised her shoulders up and down with disappointment, but the thumping beat loudly upon her exact location, almost as if it were beside her.
Emma talked to herself. “Where’s that stupid sound coming from?”
From luck came a glancing side view at a hidden room to her left. A small room, an antechamber appeared, and then a hidden entrance recessed from the main part of the catacombs. Dup-dup, dup-dup. A heart beat and thumped from inside the antechamber open doorway.
Emma had never been closer to something other than dark silence. She was close, so close that the sound waves pulsated along the ground under her feet and up through her body, until the thuds chattered even her teeth.
Tossing the fading match to the ground, she lit a fresh one on first attempt.
Crouching, she cautiously neared the corner entrance of the room. With one eye, she peered around the bend. Emma’s young face aged in an instant of terrible horror. Her pupils dilated and constricted, while targeting a hideous site, a site like no other she dared imagine. Her mind struggled to grasp what her eyes viewed. However, panic sent an automatic response, shocking her system with tremors up and down her spine as goosebumps raised tiny hairs all over her body. Her movements were arrested, and her breaths short and shallow. The once hopeful sound became a dreaded thumping noise, which pounded violently in her ears, and with each beat, the earsplitting clamor now directly threatened to end her own life as well.
Unable to blink, Emma watched and shivered.
In petrified silence, she observed the horrible event unfold. Maurice, felled on his knees, with eyes still open, stared off into nothingness. Though he appeared alive, he looked like someone already gone. Above him stood the monster in the picture from the old book that Maurice had shown Emma in the grotto earlier that evening.
The rhythmic, thumping beat came from the creature itself. Emma watched terrified as the Dweller, still unaware of her presence, attached one of its long bony hands atop Maurice’s head.
The Dweller’s long, ugly, emaciated fingers ran down Maurice’s skull, nearly covering his face, while sharp claws hooked up underneath his chin, piercing into his skin as minuscule drops of fresh, bright red blood coated each tip of the Dweller’s razor talons.
From the beast’s palm, it sucked Maurice’s body fluids out the top of his head. Maurice’s skin, once a healthy texture and color, now turned a pale greenish white, the color preceding imminent vomit and death.
Ba-bum, ba-bum. With each throbbing, rhythmic pulse, fluid poured up to the Dweller from Maurice. His once full cheeks wasted away, sinking in on themselves. Emma watched quietly, sickened as Maurice’s eyes rolled back and then deflated into his skull like withered balloons. Emma wanted to look away. She did several times, shutting her eyes tightly, yet she, unwilling to her own wish, mutely gawked at the beautiful disaster instead. She leaned around the wall’s edge for a better look. Not believing her eyes, Emma discovered that, indeed, the thumping heartbeat, which reverberated throughout the catacombs, was the monster’s hand attached to the top of Maurice’s head.
Like a surgical instrument, its bony, skeletal hand covered Maurice’s head like a bonnet, wrapping around his skull as if the two were one. Hundreds, possibly thousands of tiny, circular marble-like beads flowed up and beneath Maurice’s skin, from his arms to his head, and then were seemingly digested into the creature’s giant clawed, sickle-shaped hand. With each heartbeat, the circular beads under Maurice’s skin moved, traveling upward, pausing between pulses. Ba-bum, ba-bum. The revolting, mechanical pulse thumped on and off, drumming an orchestra of death. But it was not Maurice’s heart, for his had clearly stopped. Rather, as the Dweller feasted on its victim’s life force, its own heart grew stronger with every pulse and thump before Emma’s very eyes.
After a few minutes, the Dweller began to change in appearance. Shocked, Emma ogled, her hand covering her mouth as the creature’s bony, emaciated frame, developed muscles, tendons, veins, arteries, cartilage, along with eyes, ears, and even sprouting hair as a nose grew, each part molding themselves over a rancid, decaying layer of the Dweller’s body.
Soon, a fresh coat of skin rolled over the Dweller’s rotting husk of an outer shell. The once horrible, aberrant beast, slowly morphed into something more human, but not just human, the Dweller started to look exactly like Maurice.
Unwell, Emma silently tiptoed backward. This was too much for her to view anymore.
Emma could no longer justify gawking at the strangely mesmerizing, wrecked, mangled mess that used to be Maurice. Afraid to turn her back on the creature, which continued to devour Maurice in the hidden, smaller, dark room, Emma quietly removed herself from the thumping beat and gory mess by walking backward. Thud-thud. Her own heart raced like a rabbit, pounding fast and hard from inside her chest. She held her breath while gasping for air, but the damp moisture of the catacombs hung as steel, woolly curtains, making any deeper breaths loud, uncomfortable, and impossible for her lungs to permit.
With eyes averted, she demanded her mind to wash away the lurid, nightmarish fright, which her eyes had unbelievably viewed. Yet a disfigured Maurice, combined with an otherworldly beast taking his form, burned into her corneas and branded itself upon her mind, haunting any peaceful space left, replacing it with an arcane fear, while wallowing her soul, splashing it red as blood and black as the air surrounding her in the catacombs.
Emma’s core emotions clustered in panicked bunches of distraction, which formed a singular motivation, to flee from the horrid scene that now threatened to snatch her very soul.
Emma tipped on her toes, taking long, spread paces softly backward. She dropped the withering match.
Considering her distance from the antechamber was far enough to turn and run, she bolted from the gruesome sight. She blindly fled what remained of Maurice. Her heart skipped. Emma gasped rapid breaths of musty air, wheezing uncontrollably. Her fearful thoughts pushed her body beyond its limits as she fled the monstrous Dweller in the bleak, gloomy darkness of the catacombs.
Running, with her fingertips against the right side wall to balance herself, she had to stop after a short while, somewhat from panting, but mostly from stumbling over random objects in the deep darkness.
Unable to coordinate her movements, she clumsily tripped, finally leaning heavy headed across her forearm, and against the nearest wall while catching her breath.
The thumping sound of the hideous pulsating beat quieted as Emma straightened herself.
Cautiously she gathered her thoughts into a calm before pacing a controlled scuttle away from the Dweller through the pitch black tunnels.
Still trembling, but content that she eluded the unsightly beast back in the antechamber, Emma lit another match.
With the catacombs far behind, momentary relief lessened the gravity bearing down upon her shoulders. A tense empathy for the isolated darkness fondled her sanity. Emma smiled amid the solitary confines. Though being alone in the dark was something that had always frightened her, she now shared a peaceful blindness, a twisted sort of unclear symbiotic denial with her current, dubious surroundings. And while she still feared what she could not see, Emma hid under cloak of dark’s unsettled refuge, for worse things crowded upon her mind, making irrational fears now seem ever more reasonable to her heightened senses.
Emma lit another match. It hissed at first strike. For safety’s sake, she turned and looked behind. Her own pulse jumped with each glance backward. One moment the tunnels were empty, the next moment, an apparition formed from darkness in
to a shadowy human figure.
It unexpectedly appeared just inches away, standing, yet pale as a corpse, and with unblinking eyes, it looked right through her. It was a familiar face, except befell with fossilized horror no human should ever imagine to see.
Emma attempted to scream, yet her voice failed. The familiar face put an index finger up to their lips, hushing Emma, briskly covering her mouth from any attempts to sound alarm.
Emma ripped the hand off her mouth. “Sophie…what happened to you?”
Sophie put a finger to her own lips. “Shh!” Her widened eyes darted left and then right.
Sophie’s pink hair was tangled. Her fine, thin strands pasted together in a mix of encrusted clumps and, along with bloody, trickling lines from her crown, the red viscous fluid curved over and down past her pallid cheeks. A clotted scab broke free a bright weeping drainage from her hair to the ledge of her chin. The fresh wound bled swiftly down off her face, making a subtle plunk into one of the various muddy puddles on the ground. Her deadpan appearance had lost all hue. Few things but unthinkable fear or ultimate death changed features and drained living color so rapidly in a person.
Sophie’s eyes had not blinked, but rather, they vacantly gazed off into a nothingness of the black void ahead. Yet Emma, after what she had seen and experienced earlier, was not only cautious of the real Sophie, but even more so of a vicious, demonic creature pretending to be Sophie.
“Please don’t kill me!” Emma dropped to her knees, and prayed to the cold, hard ceiling above.
Sophie blankly wiped runny blood from off her cheek, smudging it against her drawn skin. She twisted her neck from side to side, looking over her shoulders down toward the catacombs and whispered, “Shh, it isn’t safe here. We have to move!”
“So, you’re not one of them?” Emma asked.
“You saw something?”
“Only out of the corner of my eye, so I ran.”
“What do you mean, am I one of them?”
Emma simply replied, “No, nothing.” She shook her head, while jetting out her lower lip. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Shock setting in, Sophie rambled her words as her body shivered nonstop. “That thing…that monster…it took Maurice. And I couldn’t save him.” Sophie’s talk bounced from thought to random thought. “He was right. I should have listened. It grabbed me, but I got away.” She hopped on her right leg, clearly favoring it over the other. “Oh, my god, Maurice was right. He was right about everything…I have to go back and save him.”
Hobbling, Sophie nearly collapsed with a single step. She dragged her mangled, bloody right lower limb along, hauling it like a dead, wooden stump. Sophie turned on her flashlight. Emma tossed the match to the ground and stretched her arms toward Sophie for her much needed, one-legged relief. A hesitant sidelong glare melted away, and Sophie leaned on Emma’s offered, stable shoulder.
Sophie groaned each letter of her words. “I…have…to…find…Maurice.” She eased a bit for the remaining. “And then we have to get the hell out of here as fast as we can!”
Emma eyed Sophie’s backpack. She knew it contained several things that could help her get out of the catacombs alive. Emma especially coveted the weapon brandished against her earlier, and wondered if it was still among the contents of the backpack now slung over Sophie’s shoulder.
Emma smiled a quick, coy, and cheerful upturn with the corners of her lips. Emma kept her true feelings close and guarded. She would continue to support Sophie’s extra weight on her shoulder until such time Emma felt only one of them could continue living.
Sophie winced. “Listen, I’m really sorry about what I did to you.” Distressed agony bulged out between each word. “It was wrong.” Shuffling her healthy foot, she skipped along while leaning extra weight upon Emma’s shoulder.
Emma brushed Sophie’s comments aside. “Oh…what? Don’t worry about that. Be strong for Maurice.” She snuck a peek into the backpack.
In tears, Sophie said, “No. I’m sorry. I’m really really sorry. I’ll make it up to you. I promise. I don’t know how, but I will.”
“We don’t have time for any of that stuff right now.” Emma frowned, sighing at her failed attempt to look in the backpack. “Listen, do you still have the gun?” she bluntly said.
“Yes.” Sophie patted the backpack. “That monster was so quick and strong, we didn’t even have a chance to pull it out and use it. But I’ll be ready next time.”
Adding a hint of innocence to her tone, Emma volunteered, “Maybe if it wasn’t in the bag, and I held it, we could kill that thing if it comes back.”
Sophie protested, “No. I don’t want to kill it. I want to find Maurice first.” With her crooked foot bent and twisted back in an unnatural position, Sophie jerked her head upward and clamped her teeth together, stopping Emma from walking farther until the rushed agony of her leg’s mangled spasm waned into a mild anguish. “Maybe that’s…” She huffed loudly, nearly collapsing down and in, “a good idea. I’ll get the gun out of the bag and hold it though,” Sophie said.
“What about the flashlight?” Emma asked. “You can’t hold both.”
Sophie pulled her limp appendage for another short, painful skip, and paused for a deep breath. “Here.” She handed the light to Emma. “By the way, where’s your boyfriend?”
“Oh, Killian’s not my boyfriend, he’s just…” Emma hesitated, “some guy.”
“So I guess you don’t care what happens to him down here then?”
“No, not really,” she coldly said. “He ditched me like a total loser, so no…I don’t care about him at all.”
“Well, I have to find Maurice. He’s not just a guy to me.” While balancing her weight, Sophie slipped from off Emma’s shoulder and down onto her mangled, bloody leg. “GRR! ARGH!” Sophie quietly held her scream. She puffed her cheeks, filling them with misery’s air, while panting vigorously in and out. With her eyes clamped and jaw clenched, she grabbed at her mutilated leg, falling hard to the ground this time. A pointed shinbone gouged through her skin with an unbearable sensation of torn tendons and muscle spasms. Only vast fright trumped her body’s distress. With a muffled groan, and the fear of catacomb devils hearing her injured cry, she held back a scream at its height of escape.
Sophie thrashed about on the ground, dropping the gun to use both hands to brace her wounded leg. The weapon fell into the mud, just inches away from her fully occupied hands.
Emma stared unhelping at Sophie, but her flashlight drifted downward at the gun within her reach. Emma beamed the flashlight back at Sophie and then the gun. The two briefly eyed each other, and then soon after, each eyed the gun. A race ensued as Sophie and Emma scrambled to claim the weapon.
Emma, mobile and faster, snatched it from Sophie’s slippery, muddy, blood-drenched fingertips.
Emma quickly stood, and while looking down the barrel of the gun, she swiftly pointed it, along with the flashlight at a passive Sophie, who bent over on three out of four limbs like a broken table. Sophie wobbled her balance, favoring her mangled, bloody stump. She defiantly narrowed her eyes into slits up through the beam of light, and willfully tightened her jaw at the unyielding shadow behind the gun’s barrel.
“HA!” Emma scornfully laughed. She flashed the light directly into
Sophie’s eyes as she wallowed helplessly on the ground. “Now I make the rules.”
Injury exposed insult. Dried particles of encrusted dirt intermingled with purulent, bright red drainage. The mixture blotched over Sophie’s pained look, yet even suffering could not hide her fury over the sudden reversal of fortunes between her and Emma.
“I thought we were past this?” Sophie angrily pleaded until her distress was palpable. “Maurice’s life is in danger unless…”
“Unless what?” Emma scoffed. “Unless I help you find him.” Her eyes wandered up and rolled right and left. ?
??If you want my help, I think you’ll…” Emma tapped her index finger to bottom chin. “You’ll eat that dirt next to you first.” She raised a single corner of her lip. “That is, if you really want my help?” She dangled the gun and shown the flashlight harshly into Sophie’s eyes.
Sophie’s pitch sharpened. “What?”
Emma held a stern, hard tone. “You heard me. Pick it up and eat.” She now pointed the gun at her.
“No!” Sophie turned her head to the side.
In a little girl’s voice, Emma distorted her words. “Then I guess you don’t want my help after all.” She quickly smiled, then frowned, and pouted.
With a throaty defeat, Sophie cupped her hand, scooping a pile of mud, holding it halfway between ground and mouth. She looked up at Emma with a mixture of disgusted dejection as she hesitantly raised the pile of gray muck to her puckered mouth. Eating it with her eyes fastened shut, she choked on the grit, while sandy lumps clogged her throat. Each tiny stone ground between her molars, leaving gritty bits in tiny crevices along her once sparkling teeth until she coughed uncontrollably. Kashl. Sophie hacked up chunks of thick gravelly mucous.
“There, I did what you asked.” Sophie wiped her mouth with the back of her forearm, smearing the leftover mud across her once pretty face. “Will you take me to Maurice now?” She coughed with a raspy voice, and soon after, Sophie aspirated fluid secretions from her stomach and lungs upon the ground as she gasped for another rattly breath.
“Ha! He’s already dead.” Emma gave a short, self-satisfied grin. “But thanks for the show.”
“That’s not true!” Eyes bulging, Sophie slid forward.
“Oh, but it is,” Emma cruelly replied. “I saw that creature, that thing…I saw it eating him from the inside out,” she said with vicious pleasure.
“No, I don’t believe you!” Sophie buried her face to the ground, smacking the mud several times with her fist. “I told you I was sorry, so please, take me to where he was. Maybe I can still save him!”