[Original Novel] The Black Pool, Part 12

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With a long, low pitched groan, one of the doors swung open just far enough for a wary eye to peer at us through the gap. “Outlander”, it whispered in a voice dry and harsh. My escort insisted otherwise. “That’s what I thought, but I saw them reject him. Besides, aren’t we to welcome the lost? Are we not to wash their feet, to nourish them that they might join us in awaiting his coming?”

The as yet unseen doorman withdrew, unfastened a series of chains, then swung the door open just enough further that the two of us could slip inside. The interior of the cathedral was, if anything, even more bizarre than the outside.

The doorman was in fact a woman, though I could only barely tell. Her face was as I imagined my escort’s must be, based on that brief glimpse of his hand. Brittle, brown, translucent. Like a well preserved mummy.

Her lips weren’t rotted away, but withered to the point that they did nothing to cover her cracked yellow teeth. Her arms and legs were so bony and atrophied that I could scarcely understand how she moved about.

The others were the same way. Desiccated. Skin like parchment, clinging so tightly to their skulls that they could hardly be said to have faces. All wore cloaks similar to my escort’s, but with their faces exposed. When I turned to ask why, he was gone.

“There are always wanderers like yourself in need of guidance” the woman explained, sensing my confusion. “His labor is never ending. To find them, to lead them here in time for his coming.” There it was again. “Whose coming do you mean? The fellow who brought me here?”

She smiled faintly. At least I think so, the corners of her mouth turned up. “Take a seat with the others. Time is short. If you must speak to the shepherd, you may do so when he returns. But you are plainly weary from your travels, so rest.”

I did as instructed. Every architectural detail of the church interior was fashioned from bones. Major structural elements fashioned from spines, a humerus here and there much too large to come from humans, and spiral flourishes made from the radial arrangement of shoulder blades.

Then there were the skulls. Great stacks of them, comprising entire walls. As if to spectate whatever went on in this place. A bone staircase wound up and around these walls, leading to a platform suspended by chains just beneath the massive, round opening I saw on the way in.

While taking all of this in, I became aware of many sets of eyes trained on me. The black robed multitudes, seated in a circle around some flickering light I couldn’t make out from this angle. Their eyes followed me as I sought out someplace to sit.

When I did, they parted so I could at last see whatever it was that so enraptured them. To my astonishment, it was an old fashioned television set. The case faded and stained, falling apart but still functional.

“How is there electricity?” I asked. They said nothing, just returned their gaze one by one to the television screen. Beneath it sat a video cassette player, also deteriorated enough that it surprised me it still worked.

On the flickering picture tube I saw scenes of nature. Just barely. The tape was by now so thoroughly worn out from repeated use that the picture quality was terrible. Washed out, faded and grainy, colors so distorted that the grass and trees only appeared green during rare moments of clarity.

But still, they watched. Engrossed by the imagery on the screen, and as I watched them, I understood why. A meager but precious reminder of the world they once knew. The world many of them were likely torn from long ago.

When the tape ended, there was a flurry of activity as they fought over who would rewind it. “Hurry, hurry” one of them urged, “I want to see it again!” Of course I thought, I’m sure they all do. “Settle down” an elder admonished them. “Remember, the time draws near when we’ll all see it with our own eyes.”

...Come again? I begged for clarification. They only looked at me, some smiling faintly as the woman at the door did earlier. What? What is it? What does it mean? How maddening that they would receive me, yet continue to treat me like an outsider.

Why should I do as I was told? Why should I remain here if my every attempt to learn more about what sort of people they are, and what sort of place this is, will only be met with indifferent silence? I was about to stand up and tell them off when I felt the first tremor.

I wasn’t the only one. The rest all perked up in their seats, pupils dilated, withered lips contorted into so many wide grins. “He comes”, one of them whispered. The next tremor felt slightly stronger, as did the one after it.

“He comes! Were you not told that the time is near? That the very hour of deliverance is at hand? You who have waited longest, and you-” he gestured to me. “-who have only just arrived. Let he who still doubts on this, the final eve, remain a doubter! Let those doubters be left behind as we, the patient and faithful, go on to our reward!”

The rest clapped, laughed and chattered excitedly to one another as the tremors continued to intensify. Around me, the bones began to rattle with each impact. Something’s getting closer, I felt sure of it. Something big.

The cloaked multitudes stood up from their seats, abandoning the little television which was so important to them a moment ago, and began ascending the stairs. Single file, orderly and quiet, but with expressions of wild excitement on their faces.

I ran to one of the narrow vertical windows by the door, hoping to identify the source of the tremors. I thought back to that manor with the dollhouses, and the stomping, suited creature which dwell in it. Not here, surely?

My heart raced as the tremors continued, stronger and stronger, now audible in the distance. It couldn’t have followed me. No way. How would it fit through the tunnel? Fear paralyzed me as I peered just over the sill of that narrow window, framed with spines.

The truth was worse than I dreaded. I worked myself up over the prospect that the baffling mirrored monstrosity followed me here, only for it to be something totally different. Something unlike anything I’d seen until then.

I couldn’t believe the size of it. A mile high at least, head immersed in the cloud cover. Its flesh a mottled white with patches of beige. Pulsating black veins showed through everywhere except on its legs, as those were coated with a layer of mud flakes and other grime from the feet up to the knees.

Being so large that it couldn’t move its considerable mass any quicker, it appeared to march towards us in slow motion. Leaving a craterous footprint embedded in the barren, cracked terrain behind it, then creating another in front where its foot next came down.

“We have to get out of here.” I whispered at first, not realizing it. Breathless because of the spectacle unfolding outside. “We have to get out of here!!” I yelled it this time, but to no avail. They just proceeded up the steps with a precision that suggested countless rehearsals in anticipation of today.

I scanned the city outside for any place more secure than this in which I might hide. But without knowing where the giant meant to step, one building was no more or less safe than the others. Trapped like a rat, I frantically peered out every narrow slit of a window I could find in search of some distant cave or other shelter I might still escape to.

Once it was close enough, I could make out little jet black eyes speckling its skin here and there, blinking sporadically as it moved. My stomach turned. I could feel myself losing my mind as it bore down on the cathedral, the only small mercy being that the cloud layer concealed its face.

That is, until it stuck its head into the church through that great, round opening. I screamed and fell all over myself trying to get away, but it had no obvious interest in me. Its eyes, six red slits, widened slightly and focused on the devoted multitudes gathered on the platform before it.

As I watched, its mouth opened, then the maniacs disrobed and began to climb in. One after the next, some even helping those too elderly and feeble to do so on their own. In they went, stepping over its lower row of teeth and crawling onto the tongue, then towards the back of its throat.

Once they were all inside, it closed its mouth and started to chew. I heard muffled cries of pain, but only briefly, before it swallowed. The impossible beast then looked directly at me. I froze and wet myself.

For a long, tense moment I lay there waiting for it to eat me. To tear the cathedral apart, pluck me from the wreckage and finish me off. But it didn’t. Its many eyes slowly searched the rest of the interior...then the gigantic head carefully withdrew through the opening.

What the fuck was that? What was that? I cried black, sticky tears as madness took me. Why? Why build this place? Why come here and wait for so long, just to be eaten? Was there no other meaning they could find in their lives? Or did they really believe it was the way out?

...Could they have been right? I wouldn’t have believed, before all this began, that there could exist a world like this at the bottom of some random hole in a field. For all I knew, their mangled bodies were now someplace else. Perhaps being healed in a black pool.

But then even if they were simply being digested, at least their suffering would be over soon. Perhaps they felt that if they were going to be eaten one way or the other, they might at least control when, how, and by what.

Like me, when I learned to make blankets of my own skin. Resigned to the impossibility of escape, simply trying to make themselves as comfortable as possible. It really is remarkable how comfortable you can get at the bottom of a deep, dark pit. You just have to belong there.

The impacts resumed, violently shaking the structure around me, toppling some of the skulls out of their piles. All of a sudden, I found myself wanting to follow it. Despite what I just saw, something within me forced my body to its feet, then out through the double doors.

It wouldn’t eat me. An assumption I admit, but with a firm basis. It had the chance, but I wasn’t even worth the effort. Probably only bothers showing up here because it’s guaranteed an easy meal. A snack, anyway.

Once outside I paused for a moment, stupefied by the scale of the creature now walking in the other direction. Towards another cathedral perhaps, for its next meal. I then set off in pursuit, cursing myself even as I did so.

It’s pure insanity to run towards such a thing rather than away. Yet I continued chasing after it, because it was something different. Something I hadn’t seen yet. Reason for caution, but also for hope.

How I wished for my mount. If only I’d seen where it landed! My thigh throbbed terribly with every step as I hurried, fast as I could manage, after the lumbering giant. Every ponderous step sent out shockwaves which nearly knocked me over again and again, until I worked out that I should follow it from a safer distance.

A few times it seemed to sense it was being followed. It stopped, knelt until its head was below the cloud layer, then surveyed the landscape around its feet. Whenever its eyes opened, brilliant beams of red light issued forth, which it swept around the landscape like search lights.

Because of its slow movement I had ample warning, such that every time I was able to duck behind a building or outcropping before it could spot me. More than once I was nearly too slow, and spent many tense minutes waiting for the giant to lose interest and continue on its way.

By the time we reached the outlands, pain and exhaustion forced me to stop. Between the bullet wounds and forcing myself to hobble all that way, it was all I could do to make it that far. The giant slowly plodded on ahead, leaving me behind.

That might’ve been the end of it...had the second giant not appeared. A distant silhouette at first, obscured by the thick yellow haze until close enough that I could see it properly. The first giant turned to face it, and before I could so much as guess at why there were two, they launched themselves at each other.

Blow after blow they fought, fists sending out shockwaves that I felt through the ground. The second giant was somewhat smaller. A juvenile? Could there be a whole species of these creatures? I climbed the exterior stairwell of an obsidian monument to get a better look.

The smaller giant bellowed, reverberations hammering my eardrums. Like a greatly amplified fog horn. The moment it got ahold of the other giant’s arm, it wrenched the whole thing loose in one swift motion, tearing it free from the socket.

I gasped. But the larger giant seemed all but indifferent to the injury, planting its fist in the smaller giant’s shoulder. Why do they fight, I wondered. Is it territorial? Something to do with mating, or simply their nature?

The smaller giant, when struck, lost hold of the arm. It tumbled a ways, devastating the obsidian ruins beneath it. Then the arm began to melt. Flesh liquefying, rearranging itself...into the shape of a much smaller replica of the creature whose body it was torn from.

The miniature giant ran straight for the largest, fusing rapidly into its leg the moment it came into contact with it. As I watched in awe, the assimilated flesh reformed into a new arm, sprouting from the stump of the old one.

It just went on like this, the two behemoths trading blows, tearing each other apart and reforming until the lesser giant was at last defeated. With its head ripped off, the body offered no resistance as the larger giant absorbed it, growing considerably in the process.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 13!}