Demon Seeds_A Supernatural Horror Novel Page 3

  Ender rushes to Ramose, checking for breath. Nothing. “It wasn’t your decision to make!”

  “You’re right, Captain. But with all due respect, I know you, sir. I know you’d pay any price to keep us alive. Just this once though, that price isn’t worth paying. Each of us would rather die than curse ourselves like that.”

  “Speak for yourself!” Jacques snaps. “Fais voir—where did the seed thing go?”

  Sosa has already dropped to his knees to search the blood-soaked ground.

  “Stand down, Sergeant!” Ender leaps to Ramose’s body, scanning the area with his flashlight.

  “Captain! The statues!” Jordan barks. The flashlights radiate out once more. The marble figures are closer. So much closer, some with their feet already on the dais. They don’t seem to be moving now, but their human eyes blink sluggishly in the light. Almost as if they’re still waking up.

  Ramose lays lifeless on the ground, his whole chest cavity blown wide. The blood isn’t stopping like it ought to in a corpse either. So much blood, wave after wave bubbling out of the shattered chest, soaking Ender’s hands and arms up to his elbow as he searches the body. The blood steams where it meets the hot air, making it impossible not to breathe in the thick, wet clouds.

  “What gives his life to The Beast shall never die,” Ramose’s mouth moves impossibly, despite his exposed lungs drawing no breath. “We merely sleep, just as all of you are doing now. And in that sleep you shall dream, and in that dream shall rise a nightmare which will never end until you let it. Take the seed and you will wake in the arms of those you love and bless the stars that you were wise enough to make the right decision right now.”

  The seed is still clutched in the corpses hand which stretches out to Ender. Sosa lunges for it, but Ender is quicker. The moment he snatches the seed, the dead arm collapses to the ground like a puppet after its strings are cut. Now that Ramose lay still, it’s impossible to believe that the ruined corpse was speaking a moment before.

  “I said stand down, Sergeant!” Ender bellows. Sosa’s face tightens as he stands rigidly to attention, eyes fixing on Ender’s closed hand.

  The black thing—it isn’t a seed exactly, more like a chrysalis. Ender holds it beneath the flashlight to reveal the squirming, maggoty creature barely visible within the partially opaque casing. Listening closely, they can hear it softly screaming: a shrill grain of sound in the great desert of timeless silence. Ender lifts it to his ear, listening to the sound swell like the roar of an ocean within a seashell.

  “Do you hear something?” Marque asks, standing at the periphery of the dais. How could he hear it all the way over there? But the sound is mounting by the second, the pitch broadening into a deep bass that is powerful enough for the Earth itself to be howling.

  4

  Screams can sound almost like a song when they harmonize with the rest of the chorus. The statues are joining in, throwing their heads back at a grotesquely sharp angle to bellow their souls into the miasma of open suffering. The booming howl from the chrysalis erupts in erratic spasms, mingling seamlessly with the melody of all those voices to form a deafening torrent. Rhythmic and powerful as the unstoppable tide, in and out, cascading and transforming into a myriad of sublime alterations, all revolving around the unified theme of implacable suffering.

  The blasphemous song reaches its tremendous crescendo. The troop clamps their hands around their ears, doubling over in a vain attempt to stem the unrelenting tide. The whole cavern vibrates with the growing sound as the statues move closer. One lurching step at a time, each more fluid than the last, like old men growing younger and more limber throughout the approach. Ender sprints a mad dash back toward the marble pathway, but the way they entered has already been blocked by the endless ranks of howling figures. There’s nowhere to run, except through the arch and deeper into the temple.

  The crack of a gunshot rends the air. And another. Jacques is wildly unloading rounds into the approaching statues, lancing bullets off the uncaring stone.

  “Hold your fire!”

  Another shot. Jordan has joined in the pointless fight.

  “Are you ordering me to die without a fight, Captain?” Jacques doesn’t turn from the advancing legion when he spits the words.

  “I’m ordering you not to die at all, soldier. This way, follow me!”

  Ender steps over Ramose’s lifeless corpse, conscious of the leering grin still plastered across its skull. Jacques relinquishes a last few defiant shots before pulling back to sprint after them. The statues are already climbing the marble steps by the time the last soldier passes beneath the looming archway.

  “Does anyone see something to block the opening?”

  An erratic dance of flashlights crisscross the scene. What Ender had expected to be the remnants of some ancient and crumbling architecture belied his belief. Smooth, polished, dark marble floors and columns, unmarred except where the black metal blades cleanly ruptured through the walls and ceiling. The stone holds greedily onto the light, seemingly drinking it in as though nourished by it, continuing to reflect its glow long after the beam of light has passed on. Breathtaking grandeur, but nothing that could be moved. Nothing that could be used in the defense.

  “Inside. Move,” Ender barks.

  “We’ll be trapped in there!” Jacques protests.

  “We’re trapped out here.” Ender plunges into the temple, grateful at least for the hint of cool wind which emanates from the opening. The appreciation doesn’t last. They are far too deep to feel the outside air, so where was it coming from? A moment later and the wind stops, further complicating the puzzle. Wait, there it is again, the gentle rush of air cooling his sweating brow.

  “Something is breathing down there,” Marque volunteers the unacknowledged fear. “Regular and slow. Dear God, it must be huge.”

  “The Beast,” Sosa’s voice is barely a whisper.

  The light subtly alters. Ender glances back to see Jordan at the rear, his light focused on the first statue which stands in the archway. Marble fingers flex malevolently in the light before freezing. Its neck slowly distorts itself as it lowers its head to fix them with its human eyes. It isn’t howling anymore, isn’t advancing at all. Just standing and staring, so calm and still as to mock the very idea that these golems were once possessed by life.

  “We’re exactly where it wants us to be,” Sosa says matter-of-factly.

  “I don’t think so,” Ender replies, still clutching the squirming black seed in his hand. He carefully takes another step along the polished marble floor, watching as the statue shivers briefly, only to stay rooted to the ground. “If they were trying to force us to take the seed, then we couldn’t stop them from physically restraining us or torturing us into submission.”

  “Why aren’t they following then?”

  Ender takes another step in, watching the tremble spread to the other statues behind.

  “Because they’re afraid, Sergeant. Maintain your formation, and shout if they start moving again. I’m going to see what’s at the back of this room,” Ender replies. No one breaks the heavy silence of that thought.

  The wind is getting stronger as Ender walks deeper into the temple. The black blades puncture more purposefully through the corridor here, some sticking straight across the path so Ender has to stoop or climb over them to continue. They cleave the stone too brutally to be intentionally placed—it’s more like some ancient behemoth of unimaginable force had thrust them through the building in order to slay whatever dwelt inside.

  Less than a minute later, the cool wind turns to an icy gale which whips past Ender, each blast punctuated by the hot rush of intake which drags him deeper in. He times his advances carefully now, clinging to the wall or wrapping his belt around one of the black blades to hold his stance while the torrent pummels him, only daring to move forward during the lull between breaths. If he loses his grip, or his nerves, the sudden pressure will drag him straight through one of the razor edges which has remained ind
omitably keen through all their untold eons of passivity.

  Ender doesn’t know how much longer until his courage fails, but with each step it feels like he is becoming more real. The unsettling feeling becomes so dominant that it soon replaces fear altogether. It is as though his entire existence was spent as an actor playing the arbitrary role of his life, only he had been so engrossed in the performance that he hadn’t been aware he was acting at all. His daughter, Jessica, was a stranger to him, as was his wife, Mackenzie, both playing the role they were assigned without any real connection to him. Now the lights dim and the curtain falls, and at the thundering applause of the audience Ender finds himself startling out of his dream.

  Suddenly he isn’t Captain Ender Maston anymore. That man never existed.

  Suddenly he doesn’t care about good or evil. Violence or peace.

  Doesn’t care about the thrill of a mission or the burn of solitary nights occupied by the memory of the dead.

  He doesn’t know who the real Ender is, but climbing over the last few blades, he feels as though he is about to find out.

  An archway ahead mirrors the opening of the corridor. The black metal blades are so thick here that he can’t even see past them until he navigates the final obstacles. Here the intake of breath comes so sharp and chill that he can feel his skin crack and burn like frozen fire. Clinging onto the dull shaft of one of the blades, Ender watches his knuckles turn first bright red, then white, then a sickly purplish-black as the fiendish cold slashes past them.

  Then the heavy lull. Ender wastes no time dropping to his stomach to crawl under the last of the deadly points. Still laying flat, he looks into the cavernous room which dominates the massive temple.

  He looks out at The Beast, whose breath was a tempest and whose primordial voice reverberated through the hollow places of the Earth.

  When Ender was in grade school, he used to play a game with his friends where they would try to draw the most frightening image they could imagine. Submissions ranged from a wide variety of razor-clawed monsters or brain-stealing aliens. Make it bigger, he thought, and it will be scarier. Give it more arms to bind you with, or more feet to chase you down. Show the blood dripping from its fangs or the bodies in its wake. Over the years, he understood that physical terror paled beside psychological terror, that insidious monster which needs nothing more to devastate the mind than a sense of conscience. The regret and guilt of the lost: surely there was no fear so poignant as that.

  The Beast isn’t terrifying because of its teeth or its horns though.

  It isn’t terrifying because of its suggestive nature, nor did it tap into latent fears or vulnerabilities in the human condition.

  The Beast is terror itself, and Ender can’t run fast enough.

  “Captain Ender! The statues are moving. Ender, are you in there?” Sosa shouts.

  The one blocking the door has pulled back to join its comrades on the marble dais. They are huddling together now, more of them emerging from the surrounding darkness by the second to press their bodies into the teeming masses.

  “I’ll go find him,” Marque offers.

  “Don’t bother,” Jacques says, his voice strained and harsh. “We don’t need to be taking orders from a Captain who led us here in the first place.”

  “You’re newer, so I’m going to forgive that treacherous idiocy once,” Sosa says, the boy’s voice taking on an uncustomary growl. “We all leave this place, or none of us do.”

  “You’re one to talk, after shooting our guide.” Jacques spits. “I didn’t sign up for this. I see my chance out of here, I’m taking it.”

  One of the statues is now standing on the shoulder of another. Reaching down with jerky, uneven movements, it helps a third one climb to stand on top of him. More of them swarm up from the bottom, hands outstretched to stabilize the swiftly ascending marble tower.

  “They’re building us a ladder out.” Jordan whistles in awe. He takes a step outside the arch to survey the wide field of converging statues.

  “That’s it?” Jacques asks. “It brings us all the way here and scares us half to death just to let us out again?”

  “Ender still has the seed,” Sosa replies. “We never should have let him go alone with the seed.”

  “You don’t let Ender do anything, Sergeant,” Jordan says. “He’s the Captain, he’s in charge.”

  “If you think any of us are in charge of this situation, then you’re a damned fool,” Sosa snaps back.

  “What about our reward though?” Jacques asks. “He still hired us for a job, right? How are we supposed to get paid?”

  “I’m just saying we would have known how to collect if Sosa hadn’t shot the guide. Quel désastre!” Jacques groaned.

  The statues continue climbing without fear or hesitation. Already a dozen bodies are piled on top of each other, held firm and unyielding by the growing base.

  “If he hadn’t, I had half a mind to shoot the damned ghoul myself,” Jordan admits. “Something like that deserves to die.”

  The echo of an approaching shout breaks the squabbling.

  “That’s Ender!” Marque exclaims, taking a half step inside the temple.

  “Get out. Move move move move!” comes the echo. Marque freezes mid-step. The quiet panic bubbling below the surface of each man finally breaks loose. Pale, frightened eyes flash back and forth in a silent plea for reassurance. There’s no salvation but the stampede of approaching footsteps from the temple.

  “It’s awake! Run!” Ender shouts.

  The semicircle of statues around the archway remain unbroken. There is nothing left but to climb the tower of statues which now soars precariously into the air. The desperate edge of their captain’s voice breaks the last illusion of courage as the troop rushes out in a reckless sweep.

  “Maintain focus on the handholds,” Ender bellows with unnecessary volume as if he is trying to be heard over an apocalyptic storm, although he’s close enough now that even a whisper would have clearly echoed through the cavern. “Don’t look at them in the eyes.”

  The treachery of human nature has never been more apparent as Ender’s men fight to resist the temptation. Sergeant Sosa is almost ten feet above the ground when his hand slips from its grasp on a smooth marble bicep. The statue doesn’t hesitate to lash out its hand, snatching Sosa by the shirt as he flails in the open air, dragging him back to the marble pinnacle and hoisting him onward to assist his climb. Such a real, human act of selfless assistance—Sosa can’t help but glance into his savior’s eyes in wonder.

  It isn’t his mother looking back from the statue. He doesn’t even properly remember what she looks like. It isn’t a girl he once loved, nor any of the friends or strangers he had met on all the troubled roads of his life. More than that, the statue’s living eyes captured all these essences of the human spirit. Deep and passionate, both intimate and terrible in their naked expression of the eternal soul.

  A puzzle for another time. Captain Ender is begging urgency, and with Marque and Jordan pushing from behind there is no chance to hesitate. Sosa scales rapidly, quickly growing accustomed to the shifting statues and helping hands which continue to propel him upward. Silence regains its rightful throne for a short instant as each man falls into the rhythm of his climb and the personal hell within his mind. What exactly is it they are running from though? What had Ender seen in the depths of the temple? The question is burning brighter in Sosa’s mind by the second, but he catches himself just before he speaks.

  Another alien sound from below, but unmistakable nevertheless. The choking, plaintive gasp, then a gurgling sob.

  “Captain Ender?” Jordan asks.

  The silence returns, but it doesn’t last. Another wailing heave, then the great blubbering tears of inconsolable youth. For a moment it seems as though the captain is about to speak, but another wave of hysterical breathing overtakes him and he splits the air with a shriek of the profoundest misery.

  “We’re almost there, Captain,” Sosa wh
ispers from the lead. “The statues have brought us to some kind of tunnel.”

  Ender doesn’t respond, but he manages to get a grip on his unprecedented behavior. The weeping softens to the gentle grief of someone lying in bed and reflecting upon an unlived life. With the continued aid of the statues, it isn’t long before Sosa is able to hoist himself into the earthen tunnel and pull the others up after him. The comfort of electric lights washes over them from periodic lanterns embedded in the wall. An ore track spanning the tunnel beckons them back toward civilization.

  “What?” Ender snaps, rubbing his eyes on the back of his arm.

  Sosa and Marque exchange uncomfortable glances.

  “Sir—” Marque begins.

  “Let’s save story time until we’ve got the sun over our heads,” Ender says. “As long as we’re going up, that’s good enough for me. Get that thing out of my face.”

  Jordan turns the flashlight away from Ender, but a moment later the beam lances back to illuminate the captain.

  “Captain, your eyes—”

  “I wasn’t crying.” Ender stiffens and turns away. He looks the same as he always did: buzzed hair, sharp jawline, smart posture, a paragon of discipline and excellence. All except for his eyes. They’d always been hard and uncompromising, but now they’re harder still, shining with the purest black marble. “This isn’t over yet. We need to keep moving.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you say what you saw,” Jacques retaliates.

  The mounting rumble beneath them is more convincing than anything Ender could have said. The tower of statues is toppling in the cavern below. They make no effort to preserve themselves as they tumble unceremoniously into a great heap. The rumble is only growing though. The whole temple is shaking down to its very foundations at the heart of the world.

  5

  “I love you too, baby,” Mackenzie says through the closed bathroom door. She leans heavily against it, feeling the rough grain against her back as she slides to sit on the floor. “You’re never going to be a burden to me. Do you understand that? Love doesn’t weigh you down—it’s the thing that keeps you going when everything else feels like it is holding you back. Because the world can take everything else from you—I’m sorry but it’s true. Even I can’t move the same way I used to. My mind doesn’t feel as sharp as it did when I was your age, and everything else has changed too. The place I lived, the things I did, the people I did them with—it all changes and that’s okay. Because the one thing that will never change is the love you carry with you. Calling that a burden is as silly as saying you’re tired of carrying your soul around. And just like the soul, the love you feel is who you really are—something too perfect for the world to ever touch.”