He wakes screaming, buried in the dirt. It is dark. The darkness of the grave matches the emptiness of his mind. His scream is physical, it is instinct, a habit of the body. He feels no fear, no pain, no apprehension. His body pushes up, rising against the earth. The earth falls away from him easily. The sensation of the soft earth is good against his skin. His screaming stops. He breathes. His body tells him the air is cold and good in his lungs. He does not know where he is. He does not wonder where he is. He is here and he breathes. The emptiness of his mind matches the darkness of the space. The air is good, the earth is good, the darkness is good. But there is something in the dark, a point of faint difference floating before him. The difference supplants the emptiness of his mind, giving rise to a fear that replaces the air in his lungs. But his body does not recoil. The terrible glimmer draws him to it even though he is afraid. He stands. The warm soil under his feet becomes cold and hard as he steps towards the non-dark. He reaches out and touches it - it is softer than the earth, thin and smooth. Below the soft glimmer he feels something cold and rigid, a dull shade harder to see and not as good to touch. Above the dull coldness is a warmer thing, not visible but solid and almost as smooth as the glimmer. His fingers grasp it. There is weight, heaviness breaks his grasp. The glimmer falls from his hands and in the darkness screams.
The commotion is worse in Eudora’s head than it is in reality. To the guards the ringing of the brass bell signals yet another turn of an endless cycle, and they react with the unhurried purpose of routine. To Eudora it marks the end of an excruciating six month wait and the start of her official duties. In her rush to The Garden Eudora nearly slams into Dr. Monroe, who helpfully points out that in her haste she seems to have dashed through a puddle of vegetable soup.
“Oh, gosh darn it,” she says, wiping at her speckled blouse.
“No one will notice that today,” says Monroe, his attention drawn down the hallway.
Eudora is grateful for Victor Monroe’s company during the final thirty yards to the Garden, now taken at Monroe’s more relaxed pace. She still finds him odd, but he has been a gracious colleague these past months, answering as many of her scientific questions as he has been able to and offering practical advice in thoughtful doses. He is warm to her without pandering, a rare experience for Eudora. The enlisted men, on the other hand, remain stand-offish. They show their backs to her even now, avoiding eye-contact as everyone hustles to their positions outside The Tomb’s most secret chamber. Down in The Tomb the disfigured outnumber the intact three-to-one. Now the disfigured men have formed into two lines on either side of the corridor, funneling those without wounds towards the giant sealed portal of The Garden. Eudora finds herself one of the herd, along with Dr. Monroe. She notices the men are armed with large metal sticks she guesses are military-grade cattleprods. Monroe had warned her about this precaution, so she is unconcerned…until the chanting begins.
Undying…Undying…Undying…Undying…Undying.
Eudora pulls on Monroe’s sleeve and whispers, “This is much stranger than you said it would be.”
“Yeah, it really is,” he says to her evident distress. “I didn’t want to frighten you.”
“How frightened should I be?”
Monroe shrugs. “It’s different every time, but the longer he’s away the more violent he tends to be returning. Maybe it’s cosmic jetlag, I don’t really know.” He has not looked at Eudora once during their walk together, but now he gives her a warm smile. “You’ll be fine back here. The new recruits up there are bait. If Raymond is violent when he emerges, he’ll go for one of them. That can get nasty, but it allows the others to gang up and stun him down, like trapping an angry bear. They’re good at it. Just stay back, you’ll be fine.”
Eudora scowls, “This is the best way to do this?”
“More like traditional.”
“Won’t you be in danger?”
“God, I hope not,” he says flatly. Monroe pushes through the group of unscarred, unarmed soldiers cowering together at the massive circular door. Once past them he faces the door, raising his arms in a priestly gesture. The chanting stops. Arms still raised, Monroe shouts at the door, “Return! Return! Return!” The portal makes a terrible screeching as the rusted steel breaks free from its six-month anchorage. A wretched stink bellows out from the darkness of the inner chamber as the door rolls aside, and Eudora is reminded of her first tour of the facility, when her understanding of the world had been broken and remade. She has seen the battlevault, with its 500 foot high walls and great clockwork ceiling. She has seen the elevators that descended further into the lower depths, off-limits to her and the other staff of The Tomb. She has heard the awful sounds that sneak through the vents late at night, calling her name from somewhere far below. She has watched the guards with the ruined bodies practice their strange religion in the breakrooms, a homemade jumble of vague spirituality and layman science, its scriptures borrowed from the texts of a dozen ancient mythologies. Eudora is not a member of this weird flock, does not wish to be. They sense her aversion and shun her. She is an outsider, like the undamaged soldiers grouped in front of the opening portal, all of them doomed to face what happens next alone. She knows only one thing with certainty: no one is going to lift a finger to protect her.
Part 1:https://steemit.com/horror/@senderos/the-nightmare-song
Part 2: https://steemit.com/horror/@senderos/the-nightmare-song-part-2
Part 3: https://steemit.com/horror/@senderos/the-nightmare-song-part-3
Photo by Amanda Charchian
Story by Daniel Capuzzi, 2016. All copyrights apply.