What Lurks Between - A SciFi/Horror Novella - Part Twenty

Back to the fight! Let’s go!

Artwork copyright Revensis and Mikhail Matsonashvili, licensed through Dreamstine

What Lurks Between - Part Twenty

The roar came immediately after the thud. And by thud, I mean more like an earth-shaking kaboom than the everyday thud of dropping a sack of potatoes. It was loud.

Problem is, the roar was even louder. And it was not some incoherent bellow. No, it was a single word - my name. My name, spoken with all the fury of a hundred, no make that a thousand, women scorned. It was enough to almost make me fall over dead from shock and terror.

How I managed not to was beyond me. Maybe it was Sheila’s presence, her eyes widening in fear that I knew mirrored my own. Or maybe it was a determination that I did not even know I had. Regardless, after staggering for a moment before the onslaught of sheer volume, I looked back down the tunnel toward the station we had fled and, seeing something big moving in the shadows of the tunnel back there, I did what any red-blooded man in the prime of his youth would do in that situation.

I ran like hell.

I pushed Sheila ahead of me and just ran, thanking the good Lord that we had made it onto the steady footing of the scaffold before the bunny monster decided to get its act together.

Of course, from what I had seen when I looked back, bunny monster was probably the wrong term to use; the thing looked much larger than it had been, if the shadows were a good indicator of its size. But there was no time to dwell on that, not if we wanted to have a prayer of getting out of there.

So we ran, fast as we could.

Sheila impressed me right off. She needed no coaxing; she was off like a gazelle, running far faster than she had on the streets above. I can only assume the full understanding of what we were facing moved her to new levels of effort. Or she was not really giving it her all before. Either way, it was all I could do to keep up with her, and I’m no slouch in the running department. Or at least, I wasn’t, back in the day. But as I panted and struggled to keep up, I found myself tallying up the number of years that had passed since I ran track in High School. It was a depressingly large number.

I did not have time to consider that number for very long.

Something struck me from behind in the center of my back, and I fell forward. I threw my hands out to lessen the impact of the fall, but all the same I once again struck my chin against the floor. This time, spots of light flashed across my vision and an intense ringing filled my ears. I literally lost track of everything that was going on around me, intense as the impact, and the pain, was.

Somewhere in the background, I heard Sheila scream.

A voice - a very loud voice - in my mind screamed at me to get up. Get up now, or I was a dead man, and likely Sheila would die as well. Normally a compelling argument, but I found I could not make my limbs move, at least not in a coherent manner.

Gradually the stars in my vision and the ringing in my ears began to recede and I became more aware of the environment around me.

I really wished I had not.

My back felt wet and sticky where whatever it was that struck me made contact, but there was nothing and no one else in the immediate vicinity besides Sheila.

However, somewhere not too far off, something large was moving down the scaffold toward me. The scaffold creaked and groaned with its every step, but still it kept coming. Sheila was crouched next to me, shouting at me to get up, to move. She held on to my right hand with both of hers and she was pulling frantically at me, trying to help me up.

I went with the force of Sheila’s tug and rose to a sitting position.

There I stopped as the monster strode into view. In fairness, it more hopped than walked. That much, at least, it kept of the bunny persona the beast had been wearing. Aside from that, though…

Its head was hideous, a twisting of the cute bunny face it had worn into something vile, hungry, vicious. Its snout was short, with an upturned nose, but its forehead rose quite a bit higher than the bunny’s had. It bled slowly from a gash on its left temple; that must have been where the majority of Sheila’s blows had landed, back in the station.

The rest of its body was…the best word that comes to mind is bloated. It was as though the bunny’s body had expanded like a balloon until it reached the size of a german shepherd and then cracked in multiple locations as its skin stretched beyond the breaking point, leaving areas where it was covered by soft-looking white fur and other areas that were black, or maybe very dark green, and scaly. Ooze of some sort or other dripped from those scaly parts; where it fell to the metal walkway of the scaffold, a soft hissing issued and steam, or a mist of some sort of gas, wafted up. The analytical part of my brain put two and two together and realized that the ooze, whatever it was, was acidic.

The worst part, though, were the thing’s eyes. They were different from when it wore the bunny mask. Still slitted, red, and piercing, but somehow now the red was that much redder and they almost seemed to glow with a burning light of their own. It gazed at us - at me - and I could see its rage, towering like the skyscrapers in the city above us.

All at once, the mental pressure that it had used on me all those times to force me to its will came crashing down. But it was stronger, so much stronger, than it ever had been before. My hands flew to my temples and I heard myself crying out as I fell backwards. Pain, far worse than any physical pain it had inflicted with its claws all those times, ran through every fiber of my being, down through to the depths of my soul.

Fool. To think you could beat me.

I thrashed around, mindful of nothing but the pain and the booming voice of the bunny monster in my mind.

I would have left you for last, as a reward for your service. Ended you quickly. But now…

The pressure redoubled and the world began to fade beneath a red haze that filled my vision. It was too much. I was going to pass out, and then it would finish me while I was unconscious. I know I screamed. I must have. But no sound reached my ears except the thumping of my heart and the gleeful mental cackle from my foe.

And then I blacked out.

*****

Previous Posts:

1. Part One
2. Part Two
3. Part Three
4. Part Four
5. Part Five
6. Part Six
7. Part Seven
8. Part Eight
9. Part Nine
10. Part Ten
11. Part Eleven
12. Part Twelve
13. Part Thirteen
14. Part Fourteen
15. Part Fifteen
16. Part Sixteen
17. Part Seventeen
18. Part Eighteen
19. Part Nineteen

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