Weirdbook 39

HORROR AROUND THE BEND, by Franklyn Searight-5

Easy enough to say, impossible to act on. Not while Karen was still missing.

If the ghoul could drop into the shaft, Howard should be able to do the same, and he had no hesitation in doing so.

It was a tight fit. His shoulders were the major obstacle, but he managed to squeeze them through and drop to the ground below. The shaft had been cleaned, sanitized and disinfected, making it possible for the team of investigators to attend to the awful job assigned to them. Wasting as little time as possible, he played his light over the clay walls and the opening ahead leading into the darkness. Looking down, he saw innumerable shoe prints embossed in the wet clay flooring by the investigators. They were to be expected, and did not trouble him. It was the footprints of bare feet, with toes ending in disconcerting talons having a traumatic effect upon his nervous system. For all he knew, they were made by the humanoid beast he was following, walking upright into the darkened passageway.

Howard, his hands unsteady, decided to follow and learn what was ahead.

With but a moment’s hesitation, he took his first steps into the shadowed corridor, bending his head to avoid contact with the low, earthen ceiling. Seconds later he came to a division in the corridor where the pathway diverged, one tunnel leading off to the right and the other to the left. He followed the one to the right, and soon came to another fork in the tunnel.

“It’s like moving through a Roman catacomb,” Howard thought, wishing he had a map to guide him. He was fearful there might be difficulty in making his way back to the outhouse when the time came for his return.

God! If his instincts or memory of the twists and turns failed him, and he became lost in this subterranean labyrinth tunneling below the headstones above, he might lose his mind. Ahead, the burrow opened unexpectedly into a small grotto, excavated throughout the years, nestling beneath a series of graves. Revealed was a shadowy world of broken caskets in various stages of disrepair and decay.

Heaped about were bones of all descriptions, piled haphazardly, and more were stashed in nearby niches carved into the walls. Here and there a human skull had rolled off the mound and lay about grotesquely. This, Howard decided, was a charnel house to eclipse all others, and he wondered how Randolph would react if he were down here with his team.

They’ll see the place soon enough, he reflected.

A sudden groan snapped him out of the reverie into which he had fallen, and he directed the beam of light ahead in the direction from which it came.

“Karen!” he called. “That you?”

It sounded again, fading into a moan, and then stopped. The silence continued until…

“Go back, man,” demanded an eerie, growly voice, an unnerving imitation of what a human might make.

“You do not belong here.”

Howard hurried forward, the light of his flashlight guiding his way, and just where the tunnel turned to the left, he saw something half kneeling and half sitting in the middle of the path.

He knew, without being told, precisely what it was.

He believed Karen still lived, and expected at any moment to hear from her a cry for help. The creature stood, pivoted away from him, and followed the passageway as it made a gradual turn to the right. Was it going to where Karen was, probably thrust up and hidden away? Defying the warning he had been given, he moved ahead.

“The woman is mine,” tittered Golum, or whatever its name was, if it had a name, in answer to his unspoken question.

Following the cone of light, Howard stepped toward the creature he was pursuing, wondering what horror awaited him around the bend.

“She is dead and ripening, and will be ready for the feast in another month.”

Step by step he made his way toward the anathema. Was it true, or was the thing lying to him? A shred, a minute particle of hope, returned.

Howard swallowed hard on what seemed to be his entire gullet, and his senses underwent a combination of anguish and confusion, along with a filament of hope the entity was deceitful.

There was so much about ghouls he did not know. Were they immortals, or able to be eradicated? Was there a large population of them down here, or just the one? His gut feeling was there were probably many, with ample places in which to conceal themselves. But were there enough corpses to consume and satisfy their macabre appetites?

Abruptly, Howard stopped, as another question occurred to him: If not immortal, how did this species reproduce itself?

And then the unthinkable occurred to him. If they were destructible, they would need a mother to perpetuate their numbers. Was it to be Karen’s fate? The mother of their next brood? She, he was certain, would rather be dead than used for such a purpose, and he, too, would prefer her demise, rather than have her bring forth legions of them into the world.

“The woman is dead,” gibbered the thing again, beginning to titter once more. “Leave, before you be next.”

Howard began his advance again, determined to confront the thing, to fight it, to defeat it, or to follow it back to its lair and determine for himself if Karen were alive or dead.

But such an action might be, he decided in mid step, a stupid attempt on his part. The creature was likely telling him the truth, and his wife was alive no more.

His footsteps faltered.

“Go,” it demanded again, and was suddenly joined by a colony of them coming into view behind it. “Go, before we change our minds.”

Howard turned around and make his way back through the intertwining corridors below the gravesites, stumbling over the array of skeletal fragments strewn about, impeding his way.

He would go, but only temporarily; he’d be back, and be accompanied by so many law enforcement officers this cult of flesh eaters would be forever doomed. Cylinders of cyanide would be pumped into the passages, killing many of them, and for those who remained, flame throwers would complete their annihilation. When it was done, he would have the entire cemetery complex dynamited, and build new apartment houses over the entire site.

His resolve would not be altered. He would return and be a part of the agency of their extermination.

After walking for more than a few minutes, he realized he should be back at the privy by now, and strongly suspected he had become lost in the subterranean network. It was then the soft, unnerving sound of footsteps, made by many padding feet, was carried to him. He prayed to the God of Christendom, and any others listening, for their protection.

Had the ghouls changed their minds about letting him go?

Perhaps, after all, he would not be back.