Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (27 page)

Major
stood and straightened his back. He glanced at the entrance to the cave, looked
at Mara’s still body, and then at the back of Samuel’s head, now curling in
toward his knees as he lay in a fetal position on the ground.

“There
ain’t much time left. If you don’t slip us now, I’m going to kill you and take
my chances flying solo.”

Samuel
lifted his head. He looked at Major’s eyes through a wall of silent tears but
did not respond.

“So
be it,” replied Major.

He
brought the tire iron up above his head, lining up the back of Samuel’s skull. As
he held it aloft, Samuel flipped over and threw the rock into Major’s groin. The
old man let out a muffled cry as the chunk of limestone collided with his most
sensitive area, causing him to drop his arm but not the tire iron. Major
staggered backward as the blow stole all of the breath from his lungs. He
turned sideways to spew what little remained inside his stomach.

Samuel
recognized the lull as his last opportunity to survive the fight. He pushed
himself up into a hunched position, willing his injured leg to withstand the
weight of his body. He drew his good knee back and drove it upward into Major’s
abdomen. The old man fell backward into the dirt, as did Samuel when his leg
gave out under the strain. Samuel crawled closer and spotted Scout in the dirt.
His fingers clenched the handle of the blade. Samuel aimed the point at the
back of Major’s right leg, and he reached forward and sliced across the back of
Major’s boot, just above his heel, severing the Achilles tendon. Major screamed
and dropped his weapons as his hands went toward the wound.

Feeling
on somewhat more equal terms, Samuel rolled backward to avoid a random flailing
of weapons by Major. He pulled himself into a sitting position and tried to
breathe through the fissures in his ribs. He thought about the countless
stories he had heard about hand-to-hand combat where a broken rib punctured a
lung and the combatant drowned in his own blood. Samuel rubbed his hand along
his side, hoping the pointy bones were not poised to do the same to him.

Major
could not hold back his cries. He blinked, determined not to let the pain
overtake him and force unconsciousness. The thudding force in his abdomen
caused several more dry heaves, while the burning pain above his heel made it
difficult to even roll over. Major reached for his dagger and brought it to his
chest while forcing himself over onto his back. He used his palms to push up
into a sitting position, with the cave wall supporting his back.

Samuel
rose to his knees and then to his feet as his injured leg threatened to send
him crashing into the floor of the cavern. He held Scout in his hand and locked
eyes with Major.

“I
guess this is how it’s going to end for you,” he said to the old man.

Major
shook his head back and forth. “The girl. I think she may have stopped
breathing.”

Samuel
looked over his shoulder at Mara. He had a hard time making out her form as the
cloud descended even farther, the blackness spilling inside the cave like
slow-moving, black ooze.

“Look.
Her chest isn’t moving.”

Samuel
shook his head and screamed. The cry of frustration filled the cavern and
reverberated throughout the passages. He looked at Major and then turned to
check on Mara.

The
sudden jolt of pain delivered to the back of Samuel’s head knocked him to the
ground. Before his body crashed into the stone, he regretted turning his back
on a wounded animal.

Major
crawled toward him after placing a lucky throw at the base of Samuel’s neck. Samuel
saw dashing lights sparkling in his vision, while his stomach prepared an
ejection that would be arriving soon. He tasted the bitter limestone in his
throat and blinked it from his eyes. He could see Mara’s feet and he giggled,
thinking of the witch’s feet extending from underneath the house in
The
Wizard of Oz
. The movie scene overlaid his perception in the cave as the rock
to the back of his head scrambled reality. He dug his nails into the dirt and
pulled his body toward Mara. Sounds swirled in his head as he thought he heard
music coming from the Reversion outside. Guitar riffs traveled on the floaters
in his vision as his senses that had been dulled for so long inside this
locality came alive. He shook his head and spat a glob of saliva into the dirt,
where it sat before being absorbed by the dryness of the powder.

Get
up, Samuel. Get up now, or Major is going to finish you off and leave this
locality over two dead bodies. Get up!

He
heard the voice in his head as loud as if it were being yelled directly into
his ears. It sounded like everyone and no one at the same time. The voice felt
familiar but otherworldly. He managed to turn his body over and blink as his
double vision registered two men crawling toward him on their knees, each holding
a dagger in his right hand.

Major
staggered into an upright position, using the tire iron as a makeshift crutch. He
stood slumped to one side like a shanty amidst urban decay. He raised the
dagger, deciding to use the force of gravity to drive it through Samuel’s chest.

“We
are running out of time, my boy. And I don’t think I’ve got another lucky throw
in this tired arm.”

Samuel
blinked as the blow to his head turned from disorienting to painful. He tasted
more dirt in his mouth and hoped to spare a few more seconds until the ringing
in his ears subsided enough for him to think.

“You
got a hell of an arm,” Samuel said, his words slurred.

Major
winced and recalibrated his stand. The tire iron was not long enough to provide
the support he needed for his severed tendon. Samuel watched the man’s eyes and
knew the pain was dulling his appetite for conversation.

“It’s
too bad you weren’t interested in having me as a travel partner. Think we
coulda had some times,” said Major.

Samuel
watched as the dagger came up higher. Major bent his knees like a swimmer on
the block, waiting for the sound of the starter pistol. Samuel gripped Scout in
his right hand, where the cold sweat gathered along with the adrenaline.

Major
leapt forward and brought the dagger down. He landed on top of Samuel, their
eyes meeting. Their bodies remained motionless like lovers in an embrace. Neither
spoke. Major’s mouth opened, but blood flowed from it instead of words. Samuel
looked to his right where Major’s dagger stuck in the hard ground of the cave. He
felt the warm trickle surrounding the hand that held Scout firmly lodged in
Major’s chest. Samuel shifted his weight to the left and rolled, pushing
Major’s body off his own. He left Scout inside Major, no longer feeling it
served any purpose for him. The old man blinked, his hand resting on the hilt
of the knife.

“I
tried. I really tried. If you had just stayed there.”

Major
coughed, spurting blood over his lips and down his chin. He let out a low
cackle and shook his head back and forth. “Let yer conscience go, son. This is
how I was going out, not banished to another locality like some surly teenager
sent to his room.” Another wracking cough made Major stop. His ragged breathing
reduced his speech to mere whispers.

“I’ve
gotta check on Mara,” replied Samuel, running a hand through his hair. When he
looked back at Major, the man’s eyes remained open in the long, glassy stare of
the dead.

Samuel
pushed away. His injured leg felt like a thousand pounds, and he continued to
fight through double vision. Major’s words echoed in his head, forcing Samuel
to think of his own childhood and all of the expectations he could never
fulfill. He began to cry, a few tears at first, until he sobbed. The Reversion
continued to creep into the cave, unaware of his tender, emotional state.

“Goddamn
it,” he said to nobody in particular.

Samuel
knelt and looked back at Major. The man’s corpse remained unchanged, his right
hand wrapped around the handle of the blade that had stolen his life essence. Samuel
looked over to Mara and could not tell if her chest was moving.

He
felt the air pressure inside the cave change. The billowing cloud that had
roiled overhead when he first arrived in the cursed forest had descended to
nibble on the tips of the trees. He remembered it eating the light from the sky
as it moved west to east. Samuel tried to calculate the number of days he had
spent in this locality, but he came up with nothing but a head-shaking guess,
as if he were cataloging the events of a distant dream. Now, the cloud blotted
out the entrance to the cave in a swirling mass of dark matter. It looked like
a heavy, black, velour curtain hung behind the walls, sealing the intestines of
the mountain off from the carnage brought by the Reversion.

A
constant humming came through the stone. It drew an energy through Samuel that
reverberated in his ears. It felt almost electrical, as if a microphone had
started to feed back through a mismanaged speaker system. His other senses
began to awaken, as well. Samuel could smell the dank limestone mixed with the
scent of human blood. He felt the sticky dampness on the back of his head, and
licked the coppery blood from a gash on his hand. His injuries came alive, each
demanding attention from his brain, which continued to function through the head
trauma. He was not sure why the Reversion that had sapped the essence of life
from the locality would provide a final burst of brain activity as it
extinguished what remained. Samuel pictured a video from a science class in
middle school. He could see the crude animation representing a supernova. The
star swelled, and the intensity of its glare brightened beyond its capacity to
sustain the millions of molecular activities taking place in its core. Samuel
remembered how the dying star bathed the surrounding void of space with
brilliant light before it contracted upon itself. He shuddered at the thought
of the implosion that would eventually create a black hole, a negative energy
so strong that not even light would ever escape its grasp. Whether or not he
believed he could escape, Samuel chuckled at the thought of the Reversion
sweeping through this world, turning it into a real black hole.

He
shook his head and shuffled toward Mara. Samuel did not think she had moved
since he fought with Major and began to infiltrate his thoughts. He knelt down
at her feet, collapsing to his knees. The vibrations coming through the cave
walls intensified and began to pressurize his ears. He opened his mouth wide
and held his nose while exhaling, trying to release the pressure as if he were thirty
thousand feet in the air on a commercial airliner.

“Samuel?”

He
flinched and looked up from the ground. Mara’s eyes fluttered in the dying
light. Samuel reached for her hand.

“Hold
me,” she said.

***

Samuel waited
longer than was necessary. Mara gasped, inhaling the air as if it were full of
thorny barbs. He glanced back at Major’s body before smiling at her.

“He attacked
me. Threatened to kill me and find the talisman on my body.”

She nodded. “He’s
gone?” she asked.

Now it was
Samuel’s turn to nod.

“The cloud? The
Reversion?”

“Clamping
down.”

Samuel told
Mara about how the Reversion spoiled his view of the locality, and how it now
threatened to consume the mountain and cave the way it had everything else.

“What now?” she
asked.

Samuel paused
and drew a deep breath.

“I opened that
portal for Major. Not sure how, but it opened, and I know I could get us in
it.”

Mara shook her
head. He could see the pain in her eyes and the struggle it took for her to
move even that much.

“Not me,
Samuel. I won’t be going.”

“Don’t say
that. Who knows what could happen to the wounds you suffered in this locality,
at the hands of this Reversion? They could disappear entirely.”

She shook her
head again, raising her right hand to let her fingers trail down the side of
Samuel’s cheek. He looked into her face and accepted the situation.

“So you lie here
and die? Is that the plan?”

“At least one
more time,” she replied. When Samuel began to ask her about the comment, she
placed a finger over his mouth. “There isn’t enough time for me to give you
what you want. But there are some things we need to finish.”

Samuel waited
and nodded in confirmation. He slipped a hand into his pocket, his mind already
wondering which of the items he carried was the talisman, his ticket out of one
dying world and into another.

“I’m on my own
cycle. Ours happened to overlap, but they’re distinct.”

Samuel nodded,
watching the strain the simple conversation had on Mara’s strength. “You’ve
been here before,” he said, more of a statement than a question.

“I have,” she
said while her eyes scanned the cavern.

“And the
others?” Samuel asked. He looked over his shoulder. “Him? Kole?”

“Sometimes. Not
always,” she replied.

Samuel nodded
again, waiting.

The
darkness from the Reversion crept closer to where they sat in the recess of the
main cavern. The shapeless and soundless monster oozed through the entrance,
taking gulps of stone and stalagmites. They watched it spread across the floor
like twilight seen from space. The air inside the cave became still,
suffocating. The cloud dissipated the water and stole the ambient light from
within.

“When I was a
little girl, I loved sitting on my dad’s lap. We’d watch television or
sometimes read a book. It didn’t matter. What I remember is that feeling of
being safe, secure, loved. I would curl up on his chest and the rest of the
world would melt away. It wasn’t long before preadolescence ended that feeling
forever. But I lived to recapture it, and at times, I did. It might be a fleeting
look of a lover or the comfort of a blanket on a frigid winter’s night, but I
collected those.”