The Dance Eternal

ch 17 and 18

17

John stood on a small platform, only a few inches thick and about as big around as a medicine ball, as it floated in the starry void of space. He didn’t even wonder why he wasn’t suffocating and freezing to death; even from a young age, John had always been a lucid dreamer. Something was different, though, not like a normal dream.

A flash caught his eye to the left, and a massive, crimson-hued nebula swirled into being from a tiny, bright point near its center. A sensation began to wash over him that started as a curious foreboding, but quickly became terror. He figured that it obviously had to be coming from the anomaly.

“It’s a dream. It’s a dream,” he calmly told himself, just as he’d done anytime a dream began to bother him. His mind caught onto the same center that he would find when he tried lifting things, and he quickly calmed.

Thaaaat’s right. Without my help. He recognized the presence in his mind, and its 'voice' was a lot stronger here, as if the speaker were standing next to him. There was a sense of pride that came with the ghostly, hissing praise, which helped to bolster his resolve. The fact that it was communicating with him in his dreams was something he quickly stashed away, a thought for when he was awake, for fear of it breaking his concentration.

Larger and larger the nebula grew, until it filled his forward field of vision; its deep-crimson clouds swirled and writhed obscenely, frequently pulsing from within with bright flashes that illuminated small shapes twisting jerkily within.

He could hear a howl, distant and hollow, like the wail of a strong wind on a winter night. Even in the dream, he felt it brush against his soul; cloying, sickening, and agonizingly frigid, it made him shiver in his sleep. As it grew louder, and he could discern that there were individual sounds, the howls became more like actual voices wailing in agony.

John was beginning to wonder what slumbering hell he had dreamed up, when several shapes appeared near the edge of the nebula closest to him. With near cat-like quickness, an appendage, disturbingly similar to those of the things he’d seen that first night, shot toward him and his little platform.

“Oh, no way,” John defiantly shouted, shifting the rock with a quick move to the side to avoid the thing’s reach, “this is my dream, asshole. I’m Freddy, b***h!”

With that, an area of the nebula darkened, a shadow cast by some thing within waiting for the curtain to part in introduction. The little filth-Yoda in his head suddenly exploded in a fit of terror, as the ambient wailing was drowned by a deep, unintelligible grumble.

John, the fit in his head nearly shattering his concentration, tenuously held his focus amid the mental cacophony. That last bit of focus shifted to flight mode when the nearest edges of the nebula, seeming to come from the massive shadow inside, burst with hundreds of the appendages, all homing in on him.

“Okay, screw that,” he said, and sent the rock into hyper speed (or the dream-equivalent thereof), while he put his remaining focus into waking up. The tentacles closed the distance as stars sped by John, putting him in a tunnel if white lines.

“Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakethefuckup!” He chanted aloud in his dream, hearing his voice echo as if were in a cave, and not the vastness of outer space. He glanced back, and one almost touched him; he ducked, shifting the asteroid’s path in a three-dimensional zig-zag pattern to make himself a harder target. The rock vibrated under his feet, and he glanced around to see if he’d hit something. Not finding anything, he was about to dismiss it when it happened again, rocking him on his perch.

One of the tentacles, dripping with goo, swiped at him, and hit-

John sat bolt upright, sending Jakob’s journal to the floor in a flutter, and nearly headbutted Steve; the other stepped back, hands out, “Whoa, John. It’s okay.”

John looked around, blinking and wiping his rheumy eyes, until he could clearly see that he was in the lab. Figuring that Steve had been trying to wake him, he groggily muttered an apology.

“It’s okay, John. I was worried, that’s all,” he said, sitting on the adjacent chair. “I heard you – hell, we all heard you down in the cavern.”

“Heard me? What are you talking about?”

“’Wake up’, you said a bunch of times really fast. I got up here as fast as the lift would take me.”

John looked down at himself; his shirt and hair were matted with sweat, and his pants were unnaturally cool – the kind after one had pissed themselves in fear, and the urine had since chilled to room temperature.

“Sorry, man. That was one messed up dream,” was all he said before he stood, trying to keep his back to the other man in an attempt to hide his embarrassment, and headed off to find a shower and clean clothes.

18

It was a cool, moonless night, and the stars glittered brightly above the little settlement nestled against the hillsides of the valley. People were huddled in clusters of five or more around the many fire pits dotting the settlement; they spoke quietly, and even their laughter was stifled.

One group, mostly the teens and younger adults, took a chance at playing some music. With batteries rare, and power rationed, their ingenuity came into play; knowing that too much noise would be dangerous, they softly thumped out a beat with padded barrel lids, even their own shoes, keeping the noise down but still audible throughout the encampment. Others lightly clapped, and nearly half had risen and started dancing.

Several of the older folk soon wandered toward the group, moths curious of a new light source, and were quickly absorbed into the muted frolicking mob; one man inherited a barrel-lid drum, passed on by a smiling boy just short of his teens, and promptly fell into rhythm, while the others joined the dance – a mass of twisting, leaping and bumping that somehow kept in time with the beat.

Before long, the majority of the settlers had gravitated toward the music, and even the sentries from the facility had taken a break, several dancing, a couple more offering their own musical accompaniment by knocking on their helmets with empty magazines from their guns. A smattering of children careened through the collection of dancers, swinging from the arms of laughing adults as they went.

None of them saw the woman stumble near to the edge of their group, her body jerking in spasmodic and impossible ways – her left toes were twisted around and brushing her right heel, while her right arm bent the wrong way at the elbow, occasionally flopping as if boneless. She gurgled, a sickly and pathetic noise, and dark goo ran down her face under greasy and dirty hair. She stared from glazed eyes that seemed frozen wide in absolute horror, while the tear ducts oozed the same goo – combined with the runnels from her scalp, her appearance suggested that a make-up technician had held a grudge against her face.

Her uninjured arm reached for the nearest person – a young man lighting a cigarette a few feet away from the main throng – and her hand squelched onto his shoulder.

“Hey,” he said over the din as he spun around, cigarette still between his lips. When he saw what touched him, he froze; his eyes went so wide that the irises seemed to float in the whites, and his mouth dropped open, the cigarette stuck fast to his lower lip. In his mind, a shriek erupted from everywhere, drowning out all noise and thought. His consciousness howled in agony as pain bloomed all over his body like small fires, but he could not move to put them out, or even grab his head.

He felt like he was suddenly melting away, caught in some kind of flood that was carrying his consciousness off to some distant tributary. Dark, nasty green goop began seeping from his eyes and ears, and his whole body convulsed in small jerks.

Several nearby revelers finally took notice of them, and began shouting; a couple of them recognized then for what they were, having seen them before. Within moments, the music had stopped, and the settlers were in panic mode – many went straight to running and screaming, while a group of around ten took up arms and tried to fight.

The soldiers present fired into the bodies of the things, emptying magazines as fast as the guns could spit the rounds, but still they came. Settlers ducked in between bullet-sprays, stabbing and slicing with anything they could – one rather muscular man swung a “no parking” sign like a battle ax, and lopped off one of the whipping appendages from the ex-smoker. The thing flopped about on the ground, slinging goop in every direction and tripping numerous people.

The guy went in for another attack, bringing the sign-ax down in an overhead chop, and caught it on the shoulder. The metal edge cleaved into flesh, and blood and goo splattered his entire front. The momentum stopped, the weapon lodged into the ex-man’s pelvis, and the thing twisted, jerking the sign’s post free from his iron grip.

He stepped back as the halves moved together around the foreign object, and it lashed at him with its remaining arm, which seemed to stretch as it flew at him. In a blink it had him wrapped, and he screamed in agony as the brackish substance it exuded coated him in seconds and began to smolder.

After several minutes, the crowd was gone, several of the fire pits had been overturned in the fracas and their flames were slowly spreading, and nearly a dozen of the things milled about, as if awaiting something. All around them, in pools of blood and viscera, lay the remains of many of the settlers – in part or whole. Of those who had escaped the immediate c*****e, some had locked themselves in their homes, hoping to hide and wait it out, while a handful had just run, in different directions away from the site, taking their chances with the wilderness.

A group of nearly twenty had gone to the large doors that led into the facility, hoping to get it to open, as they called out and pounded on the metal. One had found the intercom and begun hitting the buzzer repeatedly; it sounded like Morse code done by an extremely drunk person with a spelling problem.

Nearly a half-hour passed mostly in silence – the settlers attempts at attention from those within had begun to slow – before the gathered entities turned as one toward the large metal doors set into the mountainside, and began moving, sliding across the dirt and gravel while somewhat mimicking the act of walking.

Some of the people at the doors noticed the beings approaching, and one screamed bloody-murder, causing the rest to look. Feeling like cornered rats, several tried to escape on the sides, by were caught by the things' whip like appendages, their cries echoing from the doors. The rest of the things continued toward the doors, effortlessly taking down any people that got within range. In seconds, the settlers were dead to the last, the things not slowing in the slightest.

As the first of them reached the doors, they reached out and touched the steel, their slime spreading out over the surface. As more arrived and added their touch, the substance began to glow dimly with a pale crimson hue. In seconds, the coated metal began to slough away, revealing the entrance to the facility, as well as a startled Steve-and-company.