be inside, and because I can’t help myself. Knowledge is power. Or maybe it will lead to capitulation. Best-case scenario I get to talk to God. Because we need to have a talk, He and I, though we haven’t done so in some months. And there’s a good reason for that.
The thoughts swirl until they’re swept away by my determination. I reach for the makeshift lock that reminds me of the Middle Ages. I wasn’t paying attention in class the day they discussed the history of doors.
“Tell me what to do,” Lisa says.
I guide her hand toward the problem.
“We’re going to push up, okay?”
“Okay.”
Constant dampness keeps the wood swollen; it bulges in a mockery of gestation. My fingers pull from above, then push from below to no result. Lisa’s shoving, too, her face screwed up and intense—the same expression I feel on my face.
The beam shifts, groans, shoots straight up like a rocket, and we both stumble in its wake.
“Thanks,” I whisper. Lisa smiles and dusts her hands together, wipes them on her jeans and does a little
Then just like that, our performance stops and we’re ground down by the journey once more.
“What do you think is inside?”
Lisa looks flushed from our silliness. I probably do, too. Tugging the elastic band from my hair, I finger comb the damp strands, then smooth everything back into place and fasten the thick bundle.
Decomposition has its own smell. It’s the mugger of scents, slapping your face, kicking you in the gut then bolting with your wallet while you’re busy staggering and recoiling from the stench. Every so often I catch a whiff of that rotting meat smell. But also… something else I can’t define.
“There’s only one way to find out. Could be something, could be nothing.”
“Whatever it is, you have to tell me.”
“I will. I’m going in.”
She backs up fast. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, I wrench the doors open wide.
My mind goes into overload. Acid bubbles up into my mouth and I wrestle to force it down.
Detach or go crazy.
Holiday snapshots from rainy Italy: corpses, mutilation, rotting flesh. Atop the priest’s corpse a rat died nibbling at what was left of his face. DNA gone so far wrong that even the bones are so gnarled, so anomalous, they’ve ripped through his skin from the inside. What looks like a tailbone. Not just the nub people have, but a lengthy ladder of bones that hangs past the knees. Horny protrusions jutting from what used to be faces. Bodies, unrecognizable as human but too similar to be alien. Italy has made grisly art from the Reaper’s work.
There is a wet sucking sound. I know it. I don’t dare close my eyes to think, and I can’t focus on single pieces long enough to isolate its meaning. It’s a cat’s tongue dragging along a meat chunk, keratin hooks stripping away the flesh. It’s the slurping of noodles from a foam bowl. It’s the sucking of marrow from freshly snapped bones.
Something is feeding. A monster who would be man were it not for a madman’s experiment. Its inhuman lapping is both a whisper and deafening, and my eardrums clang with the sound.
Someone shut them in here. Someone locked them in this place before abandoning this living tomb, and I cannot fault them for that decision.
My hands can barely hold the wooden beam steady. With Parkinson’s-esque control I tamp it down into the brackets with my fists so that thing inside can never get out. I walk away, back to Lisa, fists tight at my side.
“What was it?” she wants to know, but I don’t know what to tell her. That thing used to be human once, but now it’s a new link on the food chain.
I shake my head. I can’t speak. If I do, I’m going to lose the beans.
We’re maybe a half mile away. The rain is lighter now and tickles my wet face before rolling under my rounded shirt collar. Lisa is chattering and I welcome the way in which she throws around words in any which order, because at least it takes my mind off the church.
Another mile. The compass indicates we’re still headed east with a slight jag south, which is exactly where I want to be. The sky feels low enough to reach down and touch my head. The clouds are congealing into a solid dark mass. The world is sucking in its breath, but for what?
Then everything blows apart at the seams. A roaring boom shakes the countryside until even the grass sinks to its knees. We hit the ground, our stomachs flat against the soft soil, arms forming a protective M over our heads. Food scatters as the bicycle falls between us.
The air thumps. Pressure forces us deeper into the grass.
“Are you okay?”
Lisa nods, her cheek flattened by the ground. Her eyes are wide and unblinking. She’s unhurt—or at least not bleeding on the outside. I determine the same about myself and roll onto my back, propping myself up on my elbows.
“You?” she asks.
“I’m okay.”
“What was that?”
“Something blew up.”
The explosion came from behind us. I know this because that’s where the fireball is rising into the sky. Smoke is a voluminous, billowing, high-fashion cloak framing the fire, enhancing its dangerous beauty.
Its significance is not lost on me, and the surge of hormones that is my flight-or-fight response whips my pulse onward, telling me flight is smarter.
“We have to go. And we have to get off the road.”
Her lips sag at the edges. “But that means we have to go through the mud. Our feet…”
“I don’t like it, either, but we don’t have a choice.”
“But why?”
“Because that explosion means there might be someone behind us. So it’s better if we stay out of sight.”
“Do you think it was the church?”
“Probably.”
There’s a short pause. “What was in there?”
“Have you ever heard of those old maps, the kind from before we knew what the continents really looked like, when people thought the earth was flat?”
“I think so. In school. Why?”
“Some of them used to have pictures of dragons or other fantastical beasts strategically placed in unexplored areas.”
The wheels turn. “Are you saying a dragon did this?”
“No. I’m saying that the whole world is dangerous now. And there are monsters out there that used to be us.”
We move on from this place, sticking to the thicker grass so our boots don’t sink and us along with them. The rain persists.
