The Chillfire Prophecies - Tell A Story To Me contest entry

This is my entry for @calluna's Tell A Story To Me contest, which can be found here. The prompt for the story is "Deep below ground, a portal opens..."

THE CHILLFIRE PROPHECIES

The news came in that morning: Ulysses Willard, the railway tycoon and mining magnate, the Copper King of the midwest, was dead. He went in his sleep, killed by an embolism, and though there were murmurings that his wife discovered him with a look of horror frozen on his face, that was likely only gossip.

Malcolm Frisk, who owned a forty three percent share in the Willard Mining Corporation and was considered the most important man in that company, received the news in stony silence, then gave a little nod and went to his quarters.

Spotted setting off into the old workings that afternoon, he was never heard from again.

* * *

"How do you know," a reporter had asked Malcolm once, "when you're near a new vein?"

"It's a tingling," he'd replied. "I feel a tingling and I know the copper's near. I can't explain it any better than that."

It wasn't the truth. But it was more or less the answer the reporter was fishing for, and Malcolm was happy to play along.

The truth was a bit more complicated.

* * *

"There it is," Almeida said, pointing at the timber, which indeed was bowing in the middle. "I think it’s even worse than when I brought the men out."

Malcolm heaved a sigh that sounded almost like a curse.

"I couldn't leave them down there--" Almeida began.

"No, I know," Malcolm cut him off. "You were right to pull them out. I was just thinking about the cost."

"I know it's the last thing we needed," Almeida said.

"The very last. "We've been hanging on by a prayer as it is. Willard's out of patience. This will be the final straw."

If that news troubled Almeida, he showed no sign of it. His face didn't fall. He didn't even flinch. Just that same, unyielding stare, as always. Malcolm thought, not for the first time, that Almeida was cut of sterner stuff than he. Most of the miners were. While Malcolm was no pushover, he was decidedly out of his element.

His place was in an office or a boardroom, salvaging seemingly lost causes. In the sixteen years he'd been in business, he'd made a name for himself pulling ailing enterprises back from the brink of bankruptcy. He was good at spotting the dead weight and inefficiencies in an organization. He knew just who to fire and what policies to implement to put an ailing company back in the black. And so, when Ulysses Willard came to him and asked if he could save his mining venture, Malcom had arrogantly assured him that he could.

But once he started he realized it wouldn't be that simple. The Willard Mining Corporation wasn't failing due to incompetence or malfeasance. On the contrary, the mining captains and timber bosses and accountants at WMC all seemed to be top notch. Their great problem was that Lenora's Mine (named for the wife of the original owner, or perhaps, some joked, for the authority which he’d exerted over her) was plumb tapped out. The single, rich vein which had prompted its reopening (and convinced Willard to found the company in the first place) had become exhausted much more quickly than expected. And while the composition of the rock made it likely that there were other lodes in the vicinity, they'd failed to find them, save for a single vein of such low grade ore that the assayers had sneeringly referred to it as "tin with a tan." The paltry sums it fetched had just barely kept the company afloat these last few weeks while the mining captains searched for better pickings. For weeks now WMC had been selling futures and laying off non-essential personnel and liquidating whatever they could to stay afloat. Everyone was working overtime, the entire enterprise running on fumes and faith.

Now it seemed their luck had run out. Based on a handful of promising samples, they'd put everything they had into this latest excavation. But the warped timber made clear it was in danger of collapsing. To reinforce or dig around it would take more money still. . . money they simply didn't have.

Malcolm studied the deformed length of wood, regarding it as though it were a work of art. He traced his gaze along the whorls and ridges in the grain, and marveled at how it bellied outward in the center. The slope of it was strangely beautiful, evocative of a fertility goddess in profile. He wasn't normally prone to such musings, but the stress and exhaustion of the past few weeks had taken their toll on him. He felt maudlin, almost weepy, as he studied the beautiful curve, and regretted that no one else would ever get to appreciate it.

"We should get out now before--" Almeida said, but he never finished the sentence. At that moment the timber gave way, the beautiful swell splitting apart with a horrible crack. This was followed by the thunderous boom of several tons of earth and stone collapsing into place.

They were standing too near the entrance to jump away. Malcolm thought he heard Almeida shout sometthing, but before could try and make it out the avalanche slammed into them. Something smashed into his head and he blacked out.

* * *

His next coherent thought was not of the cave-in, or the throbbing in his skull, or even the fire in his lungs as he choked on dust and stone, but rather of a disturbance beyond all that. . . a place where the weave of reality had rubbed away, where perception had prolapsed, where the fabric of creation had been broached and something horrible and involute had oozed and humped its way in through the fissure.

Though he lay in darkness, battered and bloody, unable to move, his hearing still was sharp. And he heard a ceaseless whispering, chitinous and somehow feminine, the peculiar lilting cadence of it cementing that impression in his mind. Feminine. . . and yet not gentle in the slightest. These were the hateful ravings of a zealot, spewing ceaselessly, the speaker never pausing to draw breath. As he listened he imagined he could make out certain words and even phrases in her litany, though in truth he felt them before he heard them, the words themselves an echo of their import.

She called herself the Prisoner, and expressed her utter hatred for the world and every thing that dwelt in it. She vowed that one day all of them would be annihilated, and described the coming holocaust in lurid, dripping detail. Every man, woman, and child, every animal and insect, every tree and bush and and blade of grass, each spore, and cell, and speck would be consumed. And she whispered of the element whereby this final blight would be effected. She called it "Chillfire", and she vowed that it would freeze and scorch the life from everything it touched.

And then, to Malcolm's horror, she spoke to him by name.

It's your destiny to bring me through, Malcolm, she said. You are the Auditor and Liberator. You must find me and set me free.

A corona opened then amidst the gloom, one small and jaundiced star flaring to life. A moment later another appeared, and then another. Then Malcolm realized that these points of flickering light weren't stars at all, but the lambent flames of carbide lamps mounted on miner's helmets. Familiar faces appeared in the gloom, gazing down on him with fearful expressions. He knew them all, had even learned their names in the months he'd been with WMC. By the light of their lamps he saw shards and slabs of rock heaped all around him, and a pale and choking dust suspended in the air. He was back in Lenora's Mine.

He also saw Almeida. Or rather what remained of him. His body lay nearby, beside a pile of stones. His head had been crushed flat.

"Mr. Frisk" a miner named McFarland called. "Are you hurt?"

"I don't know," he murmured. His body was immobile, pinned beneath the crushing weight of countless rocks, but he thought he could wriggle his fingers and toes. And though his head hurt, he didn't feel muddled or confused.

But something was very wrong. He had no idea how long he'd been buried. Though he knew it was likely only minutes, he felt as if he'd lain there for millennia, just listening to the Chillfire prophecies. Now that he'd been found and rescued, he wanted to forget those hallucinations, feel them fade away like the minutia from a bad dream.

The problem was, he could still hear them.

I'm waiting, Malcolm. Set me free and bring an end to these disgusting vermin.

He blinked and gritted his teeth and shook his head. He looked hard at his rescuers, his gaze shuttling between their dusty faces as he struggled to shut out the whisperings.

But if anything, the susurrous grew louder, so sharp he longed to clap his hands over his ears. The miners, on the other hand, all seemed indifferent to it, their expressions unflinching as they hefted the stones from him and tossed them aside. He wondered then if he was the only one who could hear the Prisoner. Was he hallucinating after all?

"Do you hear that?" he asked them.

"Hear what, Mr. Frisk?" McFarland replied.

"Never mind," Malcolm said.

I told you, you're the Auditor and Liberator! It's yours to set me free and cleanse the world.

When the heaviest stones had been removed, they helped him to his feet, the smaller rocks all tumbling from him to clatter on the pile. Before he even felt himself over to make sure that nothing was broken, Malcolm clapped his hands over his ears.

But they didn't muffle the whisperings at all. He turned around then, looking desperately around the chamber, half expecting he would see the Prisoner - whoever or whatever she was - nearby. But there was just the chamber, just the miners, standing in a circle round about him, and what was left of poor Almedia, crumpled on the floor.

"Follow me," a miner named Chevalier said, and guided him across the room, back toward the shaft. Malcolm let himself be led, still trying desperately to shut out the whispers. He knew that if he couldn't figure out some way to silence them he'd lose his mind.

This miserable filth you fraternize with. . . they dangle from creation like fat worms. They deserve, every last one of them, to die.

As they crossed through the entry, those whisperings faded for a moment. "Hold on," Malcom said, and pulled away from Chevalier. While the miners looked on in bemusement, he walked again and again through the entry. Every single time, the whisperings faded.

He knew there was a small deposit of copper in that rock. That copper was one of reasons why they'd opened a new drift in 9C. Malcolm walked back and forth through the entry a couple more times, then hurried down the corridor. But instead of following the fork that led back to the surface he struck deeper into the mine, headed into the old workings.

"Mr. Frisk, you're going the wrong way," Chevalier called.

"Something hit his head," another pointed out. "He isn't thinking clearly."

"Should we grab him?"

"All of you shut up," Malcolm called back. "And don't you lay a finger on me if you know whats good for you."

He half expected them to grab him anyway. He knew they'd never really respected him. And they had nothing to fear from him now. The mine would be shut down and the company would go under. Surely they all knew that.

But perhaps something in his tone made them think better of it. Or perhaps they simply didn't give a shit if he wanted to wander off and get himself hurt or killed. None of them tried to lead him out again, but nor did they let him wander off alone. They simply followed him in silence, maintaining a wary distance.

He hurried down corridor after corridor, slowing whenever he thought he heard a decrease in the volume of the whisperings, and then hastening again. At length he found himself in one of the oldest excavations, dating back some fifty years to when the mine first opened. It was utterly tapped out, even the overburden scraped away. And yet the whispering seemed quieter there. As he wandered even deeper in, he heard it even less, until at least it had faded almost to inaudibility.

He stood before a wall which still bore the scars of all the copper which had been scraped and gouged and hauled away. Malcolm stared at the wall several seconds, leaning this way and that, while the miners whispered and shuffled their feet restlessly behind them.

"Hey," Malcolm called. "Give me a pick."

Riley shrugged and handed him his. Malcolm approached the wall. He leaned to and fro another couple times, raised the pick over his head, and brought it down against the wall with all his strength. Sparks and little shards of stone flew off. He raised the pick again.

On the fifth strike the barrier gave way, the shards and pebbles he knocked loose falling through into another chamber. He redoubled his attack then, chopping madly at the stone until he'd opened up a modest-sized hole. He dropped the pick and forced himself headfirst into the breach, twisting and contorting till he popped out on the other side. After a few seconds the miners followed, working together to enlarge the hole into a proper entry, discussing, as they worked, whether Malcolm had lost his mind. Finally they walked into the chamber to find him standing at its center, gazing upward.

Following his gaze, they saw a gleaming ceiling of pure copper.

"My God," one of them breathed."I've never seen so much copper in all my life! How did you know?"

Malcolm said nothing, for he was savoring the silence. Later he'd would tell people that he'd felt a tingling, as though it were a sort of divination. But right then he was just relieved he'd found a place the whispers couldn't follow.

* * *

For weeks he lived down there, refusing to return to the surface. And though the miners and Willard himself though it queer, they didn't press him. They were just happy he'd found copper, enough not only to save the company but keep it afloat for years to come. Besides, they figured once the heavy and clamorous work of mining the copper began in earnest, Malcolm would leave of his own volition.

But he remained. He even had a wooden privacy partition brought down partitioned off a little area off for himself he lived and ate and bathed and slept. For when he wandered far from the massive ceiling, the whispers crept in again.

And as they carved and carried away more and more of that ceiling, he began to hear an intimation of the whisperings agian, till finally he woke one morning from a troubled sleep to find that they were back as loud as ever, the Prisoner’s hisses and threats far louder than the din of the miners and machines on every side.

Release me, Malcolm. I'll wipe your miserable kind from existence. You can atone for everything you are and everything you ought to be.

Emerging from behind his screen, he saw that an enormous plug of copper had broken free and fallen down. They were still cleaning up where it had landed. It was then that Malcolm knew he had to move on.

He called a meeting with Willard to open a new excavation.

That was the first and only time he met with any resistance from the old man. The company was doing very well, the profits rolling in so dependably that Willard didn't want to take take any new risks. But although he refused to fund any new expeditions, he told Malcolm he'd given him a raise, and a five percent stock in the company. He practically beamed as he said it, as if expecting Malcolm to fall on his knees and thank him. When Malcolm insisted again on the excavation, the old many became angry.

"I told you no. This isn't the time," he said, and stared levelly at Malcolm, daring him to defy him.

Malcolm met his stare for a moment, and then and began quoting the Prisoner. . . repeating not the words that took shape in his own mind, but the raw sounds emanating from her, the terrible hisses and guttural rasps. He mimicked even the snarls and savage grunts that punctuated every syllable. The old man listened in affronted silence, but as Malcom went on he became increasingly pale. Finally he told Malcolm he would provide him with whatever he required, then hurried off without another word.

* * *

The new excavation was carried out by a whole team of miners at an absurd pace and tremendous expense. But Malcolm found another massive lode, nearly the same size at the first. It would practically double the company's already obscene profits, and provide their miners work for years to come. He insisted that WMC finish mining the original deposit before they moved on to the new one, and thus was able to enjoy another year and a half of blessed silence before he had to move again.

He repeated this cycle some eleven times over twenty three years, discovering lode after lode, and making WMC one of the richest corporations in the world. During that time he also discovered that the copper could be worked into a fine, scratchy mesh and that by lining a cap with that mesh he could actually venture out and hear only an intimation of the whisperings. Still, he preferred the perfect silence that he only found deep in the earth beneath a vault of solid copper.

Aside from the occasional reporter or busybody, nobody ever questioned his behavior. They regarded him as an eccentric genius with an extraordinary gift. Many in the company worried that another company would steal him away, and made a point of heaping bonuses and stock options on him to keep him loyal. And a few employees, especially among the ranks of the miners, felt a certain fondness for him. None would deny that he was strange, perhaps even a madman. But he was their madman.

Old Willard, however, kept his distance. He'd scarcely spoken to Malcolm since their confrontation. But he granted whatever he requested without hesitation.

His death was something Malcolm had long planned for. Over the years he'd entertained various ideas as to just how he would handle it. One plan entailed seizing a controlling interest in the company (with the shares he already possessed and the influence he wielded it wouldn't be too difficult) and using its vast wealth to build himself a fortress of copper, with walls so thick the whisperings could never reach him again. He also thought of establishing a militia to rival the might of the US Army, and then marching it into battle against the Prisoner. But the plans he considered most frequently weren't nearly so epic. He often thought of committing suicide, to put himself beyond the Prisoner's reach. He was very, very tired.

And yet, as much as he despised the Prisoner and Chillfire whisperings, he'd also come to understand over the years that his destiny was linked to them. He’d finally resolved that when old Willard died he would set out to find the Prisoner and meet his fate.

And so, on the morning he received the news, he packed a field kit and slipped away.

* * *

He began his search back in the old workings. And though they hadn't been mined in over a decade, everything was exactly as he remembered. When he came to the site of the cave-in at 9C, and recognized that depression which they'd hauled Almeida's broken body from, he removed his cap.

He'd worn it while he found his way there, so the whisperings wouldn't distract him. Now he tossed it down into that shallow excavation.

The whispers sounded even louder than he remembered. He took a minute to steady himself, drawing deep breaths and letting out long sighs while the Prisoner hissed and snarled at him.

Finally he moved on.

* * *

Malcolm traveled for eight days and seven nights, chasing the whisperings, the Prisoners threats and sneering rhapsodies growing louder as he closed in on her location. The trek was difficult. He clambered up slopes and sidled around stalactites. He pressed himself through narrow spaces and crept along ledges. He knocked and occasionally blasted his way through any obstacles which barred his path.

At one point, the whisperings led him back up to the surface and across a series of fields. It was evening when he emerged, and he took a moment to gaze up at the sunset. A cool breeze gusted over him. A roiling murmuration of starlings careened across the landscape like a twister. Seeing all this, he felt grateful to be alive, and for that blessed moment the Prisoner was forgotten.

Then she hissed even louder, her hateful whispers drawing him back underground, into a glistening green cavern. Ducking past bats and wandering amdist a forest of glittering columns, he knew his destiny was near at hand.

* * *

There was one final barrier, a flimsy wall of flowstone, much like the one he'd chopped through when he discovered his first copper deposit. In the intervening years he'd become proficient with a pick, and he knocked an entry through the brittle rock in quick order. As he broke through, a wildly stuttering light erupted forth and the whispering became a roaring and crashing like the cacophony of a waterfall.

Shouldering his pick, Malcolm drew a deep breath then ducked down through the breach to meet the Prisoner.

She projected through a ghastly split, not only in the rockface but some deeper and more fundamental stratum, a dreadful gash hacked in the quantum sponge from which Creation had arisen. The Prisoner was more an emulsion than a figure, her anatomy sculpted by the incidental way that she had dripped in through the wound. But Malcolm's mind, incapable of comprehending her shape, forced a gestalt upon her, twisting the dribbles into sinews and the rivulets into limbs and the glimmerings and shadows into lineaments, his awareness impacting her form and likeness, just as her prophecies had impacted his awareness, until the two had reached a compromise.

Pale green and roughly humanoid in shape, she reached for him, straining to break loose from the wall, her sledgepaws - bristling with nails like gleaming hooks, clawing frantically at the air. She didn't have a face as such, but a single, gaping orifice, circumscribed by whorls of pulpy tissue, while a a vortex of jagged spines, sharp as fangs and flexible as tongues, waggled inside. A pale light spilled in silken threads out through the breach, forming a nimbus round about her and casting monstrous shadows on the walls.

Greetings, Auditor, she said. I've been waiting for you. For countless eons I've been waiting for you, ever since the moment I broke through.

"Broke through what?" Malcolm asked.

This sickening membrane, the Prisoner hissed, and tugged again against the rock, desperate to break free. It looked so delicate I couldn't help but pierce it. But its disgustingly resilient. It sealed around me as I broke through and now it holds me here against my Wishes.

"And what does that have to do with me?"

So long as I'm trapped in this hateful snare I'm deprived of opposition. My spiritstuff is too fine for this gross matter that comprises your reality. There's nothing in all this revolting weave for me to push against. Such a barren realm. However, there's a glimmering of spiritstuff in you people. . . just enough, I think, for me to take hold of. But trapped in this chamber I haven't been able to lay my hands on any of you. Until now."

The Prisoner's gaping mouth flared open even wider, the lapping teeth straining past the rim of the orifice as if reaching for him as well. I sensed, the instant you were born, that you might be susceptible to my song. And so I sang! I sang and sang and never relented, trusting one day you would hear my song and seek me out. And now you're here! Using the leverage you afford me, I will pull myself the rest of the way into your world. And then I will unleash the Chillfire. And when this odious little hell has been consumed, I will emerge again. Come to me, Liberator.

"I don't think so," Malcolm answered.

You have no choice! The fact that you heard my song confirms that our destinies are linked. Your fate is to perish here. I see it written clearly. You have no choice. Come, Liberator.

"Go to hell," said Malcolm. But the terrifying thing, the obscene fact of the matter was that he felt drawn to her, tempted to close the distance between them and let her have her way with him. Before he could give in to the temptation, he thrust a hand inside his jacket, drew forth a cavalry revolver, and fired it five times into the Prisoner's gaping mouth.

The retorts were deafening in the little chamber. The Prisoner jolted back, a green soup gushing from the orifice, and shivered horribly as if screaming. But there was no sound. Indeed, the whisperings had fallen silent.

A smile touched Malcolm's lips.

"Some years ago," he said "Your song had driven me to despair, and I was contemplating suicide. But I wanted to be sure I did it right. I wanted to make certain I would never hear your song again, even in death. Since the copper shielded me all those years from your whisperings, I had some bullets forged from it. But now I've put them to an even better use. Now that they're lodged and shredded inside you, I doubt you'll ever sing again."

She flailed in a silent fury.

"You were right about one thing though," he said. "Our destinies are linked. I still feel drawn to you, in spite of all that's happened. In time its possible you might persuade me to venture near and set you free. I refuse to take that chance."

He gazed one final moment on the writhing creature, that hideous and foolish parasite who'd aspired to destroy the world.

"For these past twenty hellish years," said Malcolm, “I've been your Auditor. But I'll be damned if I become your Liberator."

He stuck the revolver inside his own mouth and pulled the trigger.

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Thanks for reading! :D And thanks to @calluna for the awesome contest and prompt!