The Gate: 13 Dark & Odd Tales Read online

  He hadn’t been able to outrun them then, but he’d be damned if he couldn’t now.

  He might’ve had a new name and older legs, but they still carried true, and his speed caused the oversized sombrero to fly off his head. It wasn’t much of a loss, because now he could go even faster. Around the rotting husks of hydroelectric cars and boulders the size of a drawing room he swerved, his feet barely touching the gapped, decaying street. His heart pumped as fast as his legs, pushing him to even greater heights of speed. The grin that spread wide on his face threatened to split it in two. He giggled as air surged in and out of his lungs. Abe didn’t know if he’d ever felt so alive in all his life.

  Fifteen minutes later he flew past the spot in front of the bunting-covered pharmacy where they’d parked the steeds. He didn’t stop; instead, he propelled onward all the more rapidly, until his surroundings were nothing but a solid blur that hummed past his vision.

  The fountain came into view, only fifty meters away. He pushed onward and grappled inside Shade’s fanny pack for the object of his affection. It didn’t take long for his fingers to wrap around it and pull it free of its leather prison. He slowed his pace and held it before his eyes, amazed he finally held one in his own hands; that finally, after what had to have been more than ten years, the responsibility was his.

  It was a flat aluminum coin, unmarked and sixteen millimeters in diameter, covered with a thick coating of rust. The weapon against all demons, at least once you found their spawning ground.

  As they’d come to understand over the years, nothing reverses the flow of inter-dimensional fissures like oxidation.

  He stopped at the fountain’s rim and peered into the long chasm of darkness that channeled below the city. The rapid footfalls of his pursuers grew louder behind him, but they weren’t close enough to stop the inevitable. He held the coin between his thumb and forefinger and snapped, sending it tumbling into the arroyo. Those to his rear screamed; the high-pitched, inhuman wails of creatures who never should have been there in the first place. Abe held his hands over his ears to block out the sound and dropped to his knees, feeling the essences of the formless and bodiless as they passed through him on their way into the vacuum-like suction of the closing portal below. Their passage hurt, and like the dickens, and yet Abe couldn’t wipe that smile of success off his face.

  IV – Triptych

  There were songs, after all.

  As sun set on the valley around Po-Po, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego gathered around the campfire, their warhorses silent for the evening, for after the sunlight left for the other side of the world, they wouldn’t work again until it rose in the morning.

  They sat in a circle, Shade and Abe strumming guitars, Mesh pounding away on a set of bongos, with the roaring blaze of Po-Po glowing behind them. They joked for a few minutes about how fortunate it was that mustard yellow bunting burned so easily. Then they took turns singing songs of old, repeating words each of them had written in another time and life, remembering back to when things such as music and poetry and art were appreciated enough for one to earn a living; when none of them thought of battles with monsters or running from the agents of corrupt and insane dictators on the other coast of a forever shrinking continent.

  The crescent moon was high in the night sky like a cup into which the stars would soon drop when Shade re-sheathed his guitar. Abe did the same. So did Mesh with his bongos. Shade took a bottle of whiskey and three plastic cups from his knapsack, wincing when his bandaged arm scraped against the side of the rock he leaned against. He handed his brothers a glass each and poured.

  “Here’s to success, my friends,” he said. “Ain’t no voodoo hoodoo goin’ on in the basin tonight.”

  “No sir,” sang out Mesh.

  “Agreed,” said Abe.

  “So here’s to us, and victory, and hopefully not getting eaten by blood larvae when we cross the Butte tomorrow.”

  “Here, here,” the others replied in unison.

  Shade drew the glass to his lips and then pulled it back. His eyes grew sullen. “One more thing,” he said. “One more toast.”

  “What is it?”

  He raised the glass, and his gaze, to the west. “This one’s for Yaddo,” he declared. “Here’s to the last beacon of civilization left on earth.”

  Abe nodded, took a sip, and said, “I think we can all drink to that.”

  I SPY

  THE SCENE UNFOLDING around Laurence Millshack was one of clenched-tooth pandemonium. A throng of emissaries from the United Nations (as well as a few thousand curious and frightened onlookers) had gathered. The manicured front lawn of the capitol building sprawled out before him in a luscious sea of green. It seemed much less stately and regal than usual, however; this had something to do with the fact there was now a spaceship parked in the center of it.

  The ship was an eyesore, so unlike anything Laurence would have imagined a vessel that could traverse light years should look like. It was a putrid shade of brown and oblong, standing twenty feet high and sixty feet long. Truth be told, he thought it more resembled a lump of steaming camel dung than an intergalactic cruiser.

  The thing that stood in front of him overshadowed the ship’s hideousness, however. It was a male humanoid, from what he could tell, with the height of a basketball player and slime-covered skin that fluctuated from green to black depending on where one focused their eyes. It, or he, wore a filthy gray toga that hung in frays above his slender, reverse-jointed knees. The head on top of his much-too-slender shoulders was a large bulb the shape of an eggplant connected to the body by a skinny root of a neck. His mouth looked like a tiny gash from which a single stalagmite tusk rose up. The tusk creased its noseless face and came to a point a few centimeters below the head’s most discernible feature – a huge, blinking, pus-filled eye.

  This being’s name was B’loddk’nasfrat’c’blarny. Laurence, for the sake of simplicity and the fear that his tongue would explode inside his mouth from the strain of pronouncing it, dubbed the creature Benny.

  Why, one might ask, was Laurence Millshack standing, front and center, at the public relations event of any lifetime? It seemed that Benny, who represented a race of galactic ombudsmen, had come to Earth with this message: With the rapid growth rate of humanity’s technological savvy, combined with the suddenly lax (and in many cases nonexistent) editing and presentation of cogent facts in the blogosphere, the planet had been classified as “definitely repugnant and potentially harmful” by the Great Galactic Counsel. That second adverb - potentially - was an important one, because it meant that humanity was offered one final chance to avoid total annihilation.

  This is where our would-be hero comes in. According to Benny, there would be a competition between the alien and humankind’s most accomplished strategist to decide the planet’s fate. Enter Laurence Millshack, CPA, national crossword champion, banned from every casino from New Jersey to Las Vegas, and captain of the Roanoke tri-city chess team. He had been chosen by a special conclave to be the most likely candidate to triumph in whatever game the unwavering alien representative chose to play.

  “Are you ready?” asked Benny.

  Laurence nodded.

  “Very well. What is your name, Earthling?”

  “Laurence Wilbur Millshack.”

  “So, Mister Laurence Wilbur Millshack of Earth, who shall begin, you or I?”

  Laurence grinned. It was always best to let the house show its hand first.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “You start.”

  Benny’s bulbous head dipped to the side. A string of drool leaked from the corner of his mouth. “That is an acceptable answer.” He turned to face the crowd. “The game starts. This is a competition between B’loddk’nasfrat’c’blarny of Mil’puk and Laurence Wilbur Millshack of Earth. The game shall be one traditional to this planet that is wonderful in its simplicity. I will ask the first question, and Mister Millshack will have five chances to answer correctly. Once he does - and I am positive that
he will - it will be his turn to ask. The first individual that fails to answer in the allotted five chances in the allotted time shall be declared the loser. Is that clear, Mister Millshack?”

  Laurence nodded. “Of course. But what traditional game are we playing?”

  “Why, I Spy, of course.”

  Laurence’s mouth twisted into a tiny cruller. “Oh.”

  “So we start.” Benny cleared his throat and said, “I spy, with my gargantuan, pus-filled eye, something...chartreuse.”

  “Really? You see something that’s light green with a yellowish tinge?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Great.”

  Laurence glanced around him, trying to figure out which way to go.

  “Is it the cloud above us?”

  “No.”

  “The water in the lake?”

  “No.”

  “A leaf on that tree?”

  “Which leaf?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. We must be specific here.”

  “Okay. That one.”

  “No.”

  “How about...the eyes of the man standing two down from the crosswalk?”

  “No. One last guess, Mister Millshack. I think this game is not as entertaining as I had hoped.”

  Laurence’s eyes darted about. Sweat poured down his face. He could see nothing chartreuse. He knew the definition from filling those letters into numbered boxes, but his mind couldn’t connect with what it actually looked like. And his time was running out.

  “Five seconds, Mister Millshack.”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Two seconds.”

  “Come on! Okay, fine! How about the snot I wiped on my shirt?”

  “Oh, that was this close, Mister Millshack. But it is actually the color of the bile that is swirling about in your spleen. Too bad.”

  “Wait...my spleen? I thought we had to see something?”

  “Well, I can. We Mil’pukians have x-ray vision.”

  Laurence’s shoulders slumped. “I didn’t know that. That doesn’t seem very fai -”

  He was thrown back as a swift shaft of light pierced his chest. His limbs went numb and his body hit the ground, but his insides were on fire. He could barely move, but his eyes were still staring straight up. In the sky above rose Benny’s poop-shaped ship.

  Screams erupted all around him.

  The belly of the ship opened.

  A white luminescence so bright came forth that washed out all color, especially chartreuse.

  And then there was silence.

  KITTY IN THE CELLAR

  By David Dalglish

  THE BOYS HAD TEASED HER, so it was her turn to tease them.

  “It’s not even that dark,” she said to the Bradley brothers. “You aren’t scared or nothing, are you?”

  Jake, the older by a year, crossed his arms in what he thought was a defiant pose. “It’s dark, but I’m not scared. I just don’t want to get tetnis. Everything’s rusty, and that’s how you get tetnis.”

  “Yeah Kelly,” said Rick, the younger. “Tetnis makes your bones break and your jaw so stiff you can’t scream.”

  “Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat,” Kelly mocked, her face close enough to Jake’s that he could smell the skittles on her breath.

  “Shut up,” Jake said as he pushed her away. Kelly tripped and landed on her elbows, covering the seat of her shorts with grass stains. She gaped at them with exaggerated shock. Jake shot a look to Rick, trying to judge whether or not he would tattle to mom. He was close, about an ‘I’m telling’ from Kelly away.

  “Fine,” Jake said as he offered her a hand. “We’ll go in. Prove we’re not scared. Right Rick?”

  Rick, realizing pride and favor of his older brother was on the line, nodded. He decided if things went bad, or one of them got killed, he could always blame Jake later.

  “Just a look around,” Rick said. “Right?”

  His brother nodded. United in their determination, they approached the object of Kelly’s dare: a weather-beaten cellar door. It jutted against the side of Park House, a time-worn boarding house with several stories and long, thin windows. Kelly had heard the name from her brother, who was, as she proudly put it to the Bradleys, “a full teen now.” Trees surrounded them, isolating the building from the dirt road and miles of pastures.

  They had often played there, hide-and-seek or tag. Sometimes they found oddly shaped balloons. Kelly had called them condoms, and blushed a fierce red at the word. They had explored the first floor of the building, and peered up the collapsed stairway at the second floor forever hidden from them. The only place they hadn’t gone was the cellar. Padlocked chains wrapped around the large iron handles kept them out, the lock’s newness odd and unsettling.

  The day after the two boys had ruined her new church dress (Rick convinced Jake the red dye in the water balloons would look like showers of blood), Kelly told them the cellar was unlocked, and had been for awhile. And then she double-dared them to go inside. Sure enough, when they arrived, the chains were gone. The doors had opened reluctantly, each making an aching creak as they moved. The three peered within, a damp, earthy smell filling their noses.

  “You promise you’ll leave the doors open?” Jake asked.

  “Of course I will,” said Kelly. “Stop being such a baby.”

  “I mean it now, close them and you’re dead,” Jake insisted, his face as serious as he could make it.

  “Go on already,” Kelly said. She rolled her eyes when the two still refused to budge. “Fine, I promise.”

  Satisfied, Jake turned to Rick.

  “Follow me, and don’t touch nothing,” he said. “Got it?”

  Rick nodded. He was scared, and when he got scared he tended to communicate in nods and gestures instead of words. Together the two stepped down the wet brick stairs into Park House’s cellar. The only light came from the open doors above them. Slowly their eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  “What do you see?” Kelly asked them. Her voice echoed in the quiet. Rick jumped, then blushed a vivid red for being so scared. Jake saw but pretended not to.

  “Can’t see yet,” Jake shouted. He purposefully kept his back to Kelly, not wanting her to notice how edgy he was. The roof was low, and he could probably touch it with the tips of his fingers. He saw rows of jars along the walls, vague bulbous shapes inside them.

  “You see that?” Rick said, pointing to the far wall. “Brains. I swear it.”

  Rick was smart for his age, smarter than Jake, but Jake didn’t have Rick’s imagination.

  “They’re peaches or sweet peppers,” Jake said. “Stop being stupid.”

  Rick stared at the floor and kicked his feet. He nodded and accepted the reprimand.

  “So what’s down there?” Kelly asked again.

  “Just a bunch of jars,” Jake shouted. “I think I see a ton of shoes in the corner or something, wait, what is…”

  Just as he saw it, Kelly slammed the doors shut and wedged a stick through the handles.

  “Have fun!” she shouted before running to the road.

  The sudden blackness made Rick scream, and that scream awoke the thing in the corner. A single slit of light pierced the dark, and it was to that light both boys fled. Rick scrambled up the few steps and pounded on the doors. They flexed, but the stick was thick and refused to break.

  “Let us out!” Jake shouted. “You promised!”

  Rick started crying. He was slamming his shoulder against the doors. They rattled and spit dust, but still held firm. A sound came from the corner. Both stopped and looked, only for a moment. Jake saw scattered shapes of a long, bony thing in the light. Its skin was a dull gray. In the silence he heard soft thumps as it crawled across the wooden floor. When its yellow eyes shone at them, slit and angry, Jake panicked. He shoved Rick aside and rammed his body against the door, all the while howling like a madman.

  The thumps came closer. Rick looked back and saw bits of fur shining smoothly in th
e light. He shrieked. He fought with Jake, pushing aside his older brother and flailing against the barred doors, his small body a living battering ram. Jake backed down a step to give him room, and that was when he felt something sharp latch onto the fabric of his jeans.

  “Let me out!” Rick screamed. The stick snapped in half. The doors burst open with a blinding invasion of light. Squinting and horrified, Jake tried to run. Whatever was latched onto his leg held firm. He screamed for it to let go, not daring to look, only pulling, running, chasing after Rick as the fabric of his jeans tore. The two boys fled to the road where they had stashed their bikes. They hopped on and peddled as fast as their legs could go.

  By the time they slowed, Park House was miles away. Jake had laughed for the last quarter mile.

  “Can’t believe I got so scared,” he said. “You see that thing?”

  Rick nodded. He hadn’t said a word since their escape, and his face was still incredibly pale.

  “I won’t tell mom,” Jake continued. He didn’t have to say about what; Rick knew he was referring to the urine stain on his pants. Jake continued laughing, trying to make light of everything. The sunlight and open air had erased much of his fear, the incident in the cellar feeling more and more like a dream. But Rick refused to cheer, and the frozen look of terror on his face discomforted his brother. The two stopped their bikes in the road.

  “What am I gonna do, though?” Jake asked, nudging his brother. “Look at that hole in my jeans. What should I tell her, some big scary monster grabbed me and wouldn’t let go? She’ll believe that, alright, believe it as much as if I told her Martians stole my bike and took you with them.”