ELDRITCH HORRORS: DARK TALES

Devouring Darkness Hovers

by Thomas Strømsholt

(Excerpt pp. 65-67, Eldritch Horrors: Dark Tales)

Sergeant Lee and his platoon had been on patrol, a routine assignment following up on intel concerning a wanted officer from the Republican Guard. “A suspicious bastud, he was. Him livin all by himself in some mudhut out there. Not natural-like. And then there was his eyes, like to black oil. Gave me the chill bumps. Said his name was Abdul Hazred or somethin, but as he fitted the description from Intel, we naturally wanted to take him in for questionin, but he had to make trouble. He warned us threatenin-like of some . . . Damn this climate! It’s so . . . so aggervatin!” Billy Lee paused. I nodded and began to say something, but he was not listening. “It was after sunset,” he continued, “and we was a-fixin to go. I might could swear we had the prisoner handcuffed, but somehow the sonnovagun was loose. It was Adams, I think, who fired the first round, and atter that ... but it was all so confusin, see, it bein dark and all. But he . . . that man, he was dead. I tell yuh, the motherfucker was deader than a roasted pig. No more leering with them oily eyes of his. We killed him good, we did. We might should have left then and there, just up and left, easy as that. But Command told us to stay. Jees Christ, I never killed somebody afore . . . ”

For a long time he said nothing. The moon above us was a hemorrhage of silvery light, and the dark of night had become denser. The air was lifeless, dry with suspension. Billy Lee just sat there muttering, wiping the sweat off his brow. I tried to picture Billy back in Lafayette County, a healthy cornfed youth, eating apple pie and drinking cool beer under a Southern sun, but the picture was flawed. I knew something had broken within him, something which could never be repaired. My only hope was that he did not break down completely before a search and rescue team would find us.

“I might should have knowed,” Billy said, resuming his broken soliloquy. “Yuh see, Mister, something just wasn’t right about that place. I ain’t sayin that I did know, but I had got me a feeling. The place was evil. The others felt it too, we’ve all heard weird stuff of how some of these here places was haunted by demons, but naturally we wasn’t talkin about it . . . Johnson and Adams was puttin the body in a personnel pouch, and I was standin yonder, see?” He pointed but of course the direction meant nothing to me. “I wasn’t really payin attention, just thinkin about all sorts of things, and then it happened . . . the darkness happened. No, afore that I heard me a singin like to crickets but no damn crickets I ever heard. And . . . and it came from the bag. The bodybag. Adams and Johnson, they was the first to be . . . by the darkness. I cain’t tell who was or what . . . but I did seen him, except his head and arms was all wrong and him makin those awful clickin noises. All of a sudden the darkness was a-swarmin all over the place, all over . . . God! the screamin! Everbody shootin at this hell-spawned thing, shootin and yellin and screamin and I . . . I tried, really did try and . . . and there was an explosion but the darkness devourin, and now they’re all . . . all of them, they’re all dead!” Billy Lee broke off and started laughing. At first it was just a giggle, then it rose hysterically and, to make matters worse, he was gripping his rifle real hard and pointing it at me.

“See here, Mister,” he said, panting and biting his teeth, “if he can change himself to that vile . . . that bug-like thing, how can I know yuh isn’t alike that. I mean, meetin yuh out here, and yuh sayin yuh was lost. Reckon me for a fool? But I show yuh I ain’t afraid of your mind-fuckin voodoo tricks, and I ain’t drinkin your goddam water, no!”

I thought I had really had it this time. Being held at gunpoint by a mad man, does not leave one much room for thinking anything else. Actually, the verb thinking is gross misrepresentation for my state of mind, which was as blank as a dead man’s stare. Looking back, I was perhaps in some non-cerebral way prepared to die. What I was not prepared for was what happened next.

“Shut up!” Billy cried. But I had not said anything. Then I heard it too.

A sharp click.

(...)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Paul S. Kemp:
One Thousand and One Words

W. H. Pugmire
Recompense of Sorrow (brand-new Sesqua Valley!)

Ron Shiflet
Out of the Frying Pan

Don Webb
The Jest of Yig

Gary Hill
Rest in Peace, Jeremy Randall

Simon Bleaken
Ashanna's Whispers

Leigh Blackmore
The Return of Zoth-Ommog

Thomas Strømsholt
Devouring Darkness Hovers

Benjamin Szumskyj
A Haunting From Beyond

Linda Navroth
The Specimen

Dan Clore
The Dying God

Blake Wilson
The Door to Nowhere

Paul Mackintosh
The People of the Island

Henrik Sandbeck Harksen
The Bibliophile