Hotel of Madness Page 10
“Come on, remember!” a voice inside me says, and then I look around; the mist, the void, the dark shadows more sinister, more defined beneath the solid surface of this placid ocean. The Necronomicon! That vile Book of the Dead. My Book of the Dead.
“Arthur Curry, son of King Arthur, Former Sorcerer King of Atlantis,” says the voice now steady, confident, and mine.
But my name means nothing. The blood mist is all! It is here and waiting. It desires me, needs me. My soul pounds furiously. Aching. Oh, how I ache for it.
The moment I am about to reach out and touch the tree, I wake up. I am sweating profusely and bleeding from my nose and ears. I gag on the rancid air, the not-tree smelling of corpses buried underneath a sewer, and the mist carrying the droplets containing that smell along with many others inside my mouth and nostrils. I want to wretch; I want to scream. But instead, I scramble to my feet, desperate to put distance between myself and the radiant heat at the base of that tree.
It was in my head, not sure how or even when, but… the book. The Necronomicon should be here at the very least it should be—
At the center of that fusion reactor I tried to crawl into.
“Technically, you're giving me what I want, huh?! Always a thing with you!”
I look around for a weapon, a piece of table, or a chair. Anything that you’d normally find in a breakroom. But there’s nothing, just endless void, and this tree, the only real object here beyond the mist and the assurances that I’m standing on something resembling the ground.
“You wouldn’t be so kind as to give yourself up and let me fix all this, huh?”
The dead silence, the sound of deliberate heavy breathing coming from the entrance, has been replaced with… nothing.
“The silent treatment, huh?” I think about this situation, whether this micro pocket of reality is spreading or am I merely trapped in a dreamlike state where nothing is real, save for the book and that tree. No way to test that theory but—
Without an anchor, this was a bad idea; lightning surges from my hand into the general area, hungrily seeking something, anything, to consume. I cut the spell off short before it doubles back on me and turns my right hand into nothing more than a burnt stump. The pain is electrifying, for lack of a better word, and most importantly, very, very real.
Well, a dream is out. Unless I’m in a really good one, deep frying my nerve endings would have dispelled it. Alternate reality eating our own reality at a rapid pace, maybe? The mist was visibly spreading from the hallway leading to the Necronomicon. If there is a certain… radius, if you will, where the mist and tree's influence is more potent, then ideally, that circle would widen as time went on. Probably not quite as painful as being eaten by the undead, but the jury is still out on that. There is a small matter of the nerdcore being lost in here. It is safe to assume if I was separated, then they were also separated, probably individually. I was drawn to the tree due to my desire for the Necronomicon, which explains how I was affected despite my training. Even with wards…
“They're all dead.”
Wards aren’t good at protecting you against things that are not openly hostile. At least not the ones I made for them. It was how Derek roped me into this, the geas by itself wasn’t designed to harm me (I call bullshit on that), so there was no need to overpower any protections I may have. Once he understood that I was a Hero, he only needed to target my subconscious desire to help.
But an untrained mind hasn’t folded their desire to live a thousand times over to the point where even death doesn’t truly mean you die. That instinct to survive beyond your ability to comprehend is how you recognize your own mortality in situations where it's not apparent that your life is at stake. Without that, you're liable to fall into the Sarlacc pit unironically.
Maybe I’m being too grim. I’m not warded, and I lived somehow. They may make it. If the tree is the singularity, then eventually, they’ll wander here. Or get lost in the void. I was drawn here. I can’t assume they will be too, but I can hope.
A lot of “if’s,” “could be’s,” and “hopes.” I can manipulate the forces of probability! There has to be some way to increase the odds of their survival.
“The shark tooth blade.”
If I can focus on that, I can designate it as a point of interest, and if I project my thoughts across this abyss, maybe, assuming we’re still on the same linear plane, I can guide them to Susan. Maybe that’ll work.
Well, it might have worked until the ground started to move.
Gods Below
A dorsal fin crests the horizon where the mist meets the never-ending void. It was so far away, at first I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Until I realized why the ground shook.
Half transfixed, half petrified by sheer terror, the scale of something that enormous is incomprehensible to my dear senses, leaving me only to watch as the giant fin slowly sinks back into the ground below. That placid ocean beneath the glacial ice on which I stand. The thought to run comes to mind, a desperate, screaming insanity far greater than any previous thoughts about saving the world.
But I can’t run. I can’t listen to that primal fear of the deep ocean, of things lurking underneath. I am stuck even as the ground shifts to accommodate the weight of the doom slicing through the frozen waters.
I want to scream, but the sound never leaves my throat.
Think.
The cracks and fissures are visible despite the rolling fog. They stretch to me and around me.
Think.
The ice tips and saws back with force as if caught in a terrible turbine. The shifting tips the ground and exposes the murky depths beneath the glacial ice. Shadows become more defined as the stepping lights intensify around the singular hulking mass. And I slide inevitably toward the stone ocean, the super-dense liquid as inviting to the human body as the deepest ocean depths, but any attempt to run from it, to scramble to safety, is muted.
Think.
I scream at my body to move, to save itself, but it won’t obey! It’s as if I’m being compelled. But compelled to do what?
THINK.
Something that large doesn’t want its prey escaping. It doesn’t want me to run. Any thought about running reinforces it, refolding the compulsion unto itself, motivated, no... fueled by fear. But I need to run!
No. I don’t need to run. It makes the most sense. It's not my fear but my understanding. My own perception feeds it, the terror... once I realize that my freedom was robbed from me, it redoubles it. So what’s left?
I reach out and catch the edge of the ice as it tilts into the water. I can hear the ice whine under pressure exerted by the dark waters. I hold on for dear life. Terror reinforces my grip, and panic floods through my being. In my final moments, my mind stretches out for something, anything that could help. No, not help, fight. Fight the horror with everything and anything you can. Focus, stretch the mind across past and present, and reach for something you know will at least hurt.
And I laugh, “What could possibly put a dent in a 60-foot mosasaur?” And to think the worst thing that could have happened to me today was being caught in a hotel room with two dead—
I grab the first Glock out of the air and let go of the icy ledge. Trying my best to brace myself and grab the second Glock as it appears in front of me. Fumbling now with occupied hands, I twist and reach for the edge before the incline slides me down even further. Taking three deep breaths, I let go and bite into my left wrist. The blood flows as I continue to slide. I waste band one gun and expose the magazine of the other. I let the blood flow down the mag and repeat the process for the second gun. I tear off a piece of shirt and try to wrap my wrist while kicking at the ice in an attempt to gain purchase.
With some desperation, I make a foothold. I stare into the black waters knowing what’s out there but needing one last confirmation. And then I see it; something massive shifting the gloom as it approaches, the lights dancing out of range of it, the details of its form left to shadows
but the implications of it no less terrifying.
“God, run. Just fucking run!” But beyond can’t, I won’t. Going to get snuffed out. Going to do so screaming.
Bang, Bang, Bang Bang.
I have to focus on each bullet, my blood enriching the miniature explosions needed for repulsion and reinforcing the metal casing with eldritch fury. This won’t save me. It simply can’t save me, but I’m not dying without trying.
And then I can feel it, a cry at first, then a rumble of pure rage.
“DEFIANCE!?” the words are felt more than heard, and the feeling is terrible! It is as if my brain is being torn apart by a hurricane. I hold my ears begging the pain to stop, but the mere echo of its thoughts and feelings folds me in half
But I know it felt pain. So with one hand to my ear, I shoot desperately into the ocean below. The mist turns a shade of green as I keep firing, and the ground rumbles as the bullets find home. And then suddenly, I am launched into the air, or more specifically, the block of ice I’m on is punted with me still on it. The thick slab tumbles into the distance as I fly for seconds before smashing my already bruised body into the hard ground below. The bitter cold and the unpleasant taste of the mist is everything as I slip in and out of consciousness.
“That hurt.” I laugh gingerly. I didn’t just land but skidded across the ice, leaving a trail of blood in my wake. The mist glows red along trails created by my skid marks as if instead of freezing, my blood is evaporating despite the implied cold. Or it’s being consumed by the fog I am breathing in raggedly.
I shake the thought as I try to sit up, but my left leg is busted, and my right shoulder is dislocated. Also, any hope of healing those bruised ribs is shot. I can probably count on two, maybe three being broken. But in the distance, I see it, the thing that I was trying to kill slides an impossible large hand back into the water.
I somehow held on to both guns, but besides pissing it off, unloading the rest of the clip won’t do any good. I need a better plan.
“Think!” It must have tried to grab me and missed. Was it hoping that I would slide into the water? Poor eyesight? Or simply didn’t expect me to work around its compulsion.
Fuck.
I lean back and rest my body on the floor. Surprisingly, the ice isn’t cold and feels rather comfortable, so I close my eyes and let my thoughts drift, impending doom be damned. Maybe I should conjure a rocket launcher? Abram tank? Soviet nuclear sub?
“Haha.” I can’t help but laugh now. Everything hurts; laughing hurts. God, I miss zombies. Or those zombified police officers. Probably could have taken them. And get shot in the process. Most of this still happens anyway, and the world gets sandwiched between whatever this is and DURA’G.
This Hero thing sucks balls. I sit up and wince due to the pain and remember a detail. The mist turned green. Yes, when I shot it, the mist turned green, which means the bullets penetrated enough to draw something like blood. Ok, but why am I thinking about this?
The cracks begin to form on the ground as the thing comes near. Thinking about it, its form, its shape, I mistook it for a prehistoric lizard fully evolved for aquatic life instead of something that is merely powerful enough to ignore the pressures of its environment. I can drag a gun through space-time. But what about the bullets?
I sit back down and let myself rest. It hurts too much to sit up, and if this doesn’t work, I might as well be comfortable. The impromptu banishment rounds pierced something close to flesh. That thing needs me incapacitated to eat me, so while it can ignore the laws of biological existence, this place is harsher than earth. I just can’t imagine where the rounds went. I can’t fathom what it is and where it belongs in the pecking order. I just know it's big and, by extension hungry, there is no way I could…
I close my eyes even tighter and spread my consciousness across space until perception shifts, and I feel the weight of my surroundings entrap me. I can’t move, I can’t speak, I can’t think. No, I know what I am, and now I feel where I am. Enlodged inside the muscle of something powerful, me and 15 other me’s trapped between the crushing cold and the otherworldly heat. And no, no, something huge and terrifying has touched me. Touched, not the me that is lead, but the me that is consciousness and will. The me that is alien to it as I am to him. But the touch is gentle, mind to mind until it realizes I am smaller than it. Now the touch is sharp like a knife braced on a steak before breaking through the cooked flesh. And that’s when I pull.
Plink, plink, plink plink.
The bullets land around me. My clenched right hand is outstretched in defiance, a mental anchor for the expression of power that falls limp in my exhaustion. I breathe heavily as the mist changes tones between green and blood red, my curious theory about it eating blood being proven right as the seconds wear on.
Still in too much pain to move and with the added bonus of exhaustion, I sit there listening for the inevitable eruption of ice and water as the thing below devours me whole. In the distance, I can feel the book laughing at me. Now that it has won and its corruption will spread without opposition. The laugh is hysterical, and I laugh with it. This is funny, after all. Fuck, this is fucking hilarious.
Then the ground erupts. A large bulbous head with countless closed eyes arranged so that none of them face forward breaks the plane and opens a beak-like mouth lined with jagged teeth and several whipping tongues. It emits an agonizing scream.
The sound shatters the eardrums and would have burst my skull if its head didn’t bob back into the water, turning the scream into a gargle. The lights within the mist dance brightly, highlighting the fight to find purchase above the water; its many limbs, some shaped discernibly like arms and others with more alien inspiration, claw desperately at the thick ice. Its desire to push its bulk above the ice is so strong that the ground itself was slowly tilting to accommodate it.
Exhausted, I can only watch as I start to slide toward it.
“Fuck, at least I winged it.”
Pain and sanity go hand in hand; one wanes to make room for the other. And I can feel myself growing numb as my desire to laugh at my own demise grows in proportion. As the speed of the skid increases, so does my laughter, until the tears roll from my eyes and I shut them to the pain. But then I’m thrown backward like a kid at the down end of a seesaw. The effect sends me bouncing backward before rolling to a stop. Being unable to move, I clench my teeth as I slowly move my neck into position to see what’s going on.
At first, I can see nothing. Then I realize the water is bubbling furiously where the creature just was. Shapes, indiscernible but no less terrifying, move below the ice just beyond the edge of the visible light. Shadows of terrible creatures are cast, some massive, others relatively small, taking turns at something caught in the middle. It takes me but a moment to realize what it is, its bulk getting smaller as it sinks to the bottom, and the shadow’s movements getting more eager as they converge on it. The mist is a solid shade of green around the exposed ocean waters. And the fear gives way to awe as the underwater battle is waged in silence.
“Well damn.”
Night with Susan
Jacob is the first to go. We are looking for Arthur, our fearless Hero, when something shatters the ground beneath us and grabs Jacob before we have time to scream. He disappears so fast the only thing I saw was a mass of tentacles whipping and flailing where he once stood. His screams are cut abruptly short, and spouts of blood jet to the surface, the fog turning red as his remains rain down.
We run after that. Rico is the fastest at first, but then suddenly, he stops. I run to him but freeze when I see he is coughing up blood and bile, his body doubled over in an attempt to keep his insides from becoming outside. When he notices me, he reaches for me, and I get a good look at his face, mouth covered in a layer of wet blood and chunks of half-digested stomach matter. His eyes are bloodshot, and his face twitches as if something, or things, move beneath his skin. He tries to stretch towards me, wanting desperately for me or anyone to help him. But
I can’t, shaking my head and walking backward as he crawls toward me, each step more painful for him than the last; I can’t help him.
“I’m sorry!” I mouth as if the words don’t dare to leave my lips. He wants to say something, to say, ‘Please help me, Susan,” or “I don’t want to die,” but his throat bulges, and with some effort, he throws up again. This time it is more than blood. Despite the fog and the limited lighting, I know it his stomach, riddled with holes and filled with yellow pus rolling on the icy floor. I ran.
Vee is ahead of me, crying and wailing as she runs. I want to tell her to stop, to wait, to calm down, and maybe we can find a way out of here. But she is too far, and I am too afraid. As if by some sentient design, the fog rolls over her, and within the strange haze, she disappears. No, she fades as if the fog met her fully and tore her from this reality.
Alone, I stop running. Rico is likely dead, and Jacob is definitely dead. Vee is gone. Maybe wished away to a better place, one less reminiscent of the last level in hell where Dante met Satan bound by a glacier of ice. Is that where I am? Hell?
“Fuck.”
Aimless, the only thing left to do is walk. Find Arthur, maybe? I shake my head at the thought. There is nothing here but fog. Endless fog rolling along hills of sheer ice. And things lurking underneath the ice. And disease.
This doesn’t make sense. We were in a hallway. I was following Arthur. We were together until…
On the edge of my memory, I see something—like the halfway point between a lucid dream and a grim nightmare. Something creeping out of frame so briefly I couldn’t pinpoint it no matter how hard I tried to replay the last few moments on Earth in my head. The door was up ahead. It glowed how I imagine a nuclear reactor would. A dangerous, unnatural light matching the flickering overhead lights that lined the hallway.