No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) (16 page)

Do mine
look like that?

Alena
stepped backwards through the door, now swinging slowly open behind her.

Sasha
couldn’t let her go; the need was too strong, and he wondered how he’d managed
so

long
without her or this feeling. Although it was dark, he hoped they’d fuck again
soon. It felt like his balls were trying to crawl up into his body an inch at a
time, but the feeling wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

2014

David
drifted back to wakefulness, slowly becoming aware that something soft filled
his mouth and was sealed in by what could only be tape. Brittle edges bit into
his wrists and ankles, almost breaking the skin and numbing his fingers.

It took
him a moment to realize his eyes were covered too.

Droning
filled his head, which was pounding steadily.

The ground
felt like it was moving. Still groggy, he thought it could’ve been the drug.

The drone
continued, rising and falling almost in time with the movement of the ground.

Deck.
The thought forced its way to the front of his mind,
pushing aside the fog still clouding it. Panic crept up behind it, but he
couldn’t do much more than twitch his arms and legs.

“Mmph.”

In his
head, it was a scream or something like it, rather than what he breathed out
through his gag and nose. The engine’s noise wound downwards and the pitching
of the deck gradually stopped, until the boat puttered along to wherever it was
going.

No one was
going to miss David; fewer still would mourn his death, no matter how brutal it
might end up being. He’d seen enough videos of what happened to gay men unlucky
enough to get caught by skinheads.

Would he
beg?
Probably
. Would it do any good?
No.

Would he
say he was a pedophile, no matter if it wasn’t true? Yes, he’d say anything to
stop from being cut or burned — or raped with a bottle. They’d make a video and
put it on the web, and most people in his own country would think it was fake.
Others would laugh; a few would mourn, but no one he would know.

“That’s
not why you’re here.” The voice was soft, but definitely a man’s. “Not exactly,
anyway…you’ll see soon enough.”

Blindfold
removed, David saw where he’d been taken. The old fort out in the water; the
city’s lights flickered in the distance. His captor ripped the tape from his
mouth and pulled the cloth from inside. No one would hear him out here, after
all.

“Fuck,
please…” This earned him a slap across the face.

His captor
was about David’s age; early thirties. A scar ran down from the top of his head
on the right side to the cleft of his jaw; ragged and wide, as if carved there.
A small tattoo rested under his left eye, a symbol like a crooked cross inked
in black. He was stronger than he looked and picked David up, bringing him to
rest over his shoulder.

For a
horrible moment, David felt the man sway as he stepped off the boat and onto
the quay. He imagined falling into the water, slowly sinking as he twisted and
turned. He imagined falling to the stone ground and breaking bones. It was hard
to say which would be worse.

From his vantage,
David got a more or less clear view of everything around them as they passed
inside the old building. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he caught sight
of twisted girders and steel frames.

He
wondered if there were still bodies underneath them, unrecovered from the fire.
When had it been?

His captor
paused, flicked a switch, and brought some dim halogen lamps to life. The light
was fitful — hazy, as if the filaments were on their last legs. They
illuminated white tiles spotted with mold and moss, a floor hidden beneath a
layer of disturbed dust.

David was
dumped to the floor and the wind was knocked from his lungs. He curled up into
a ball, bending around himself and only straightening out when the pain
subsided somewhat.

“He
promises me things,” said the tattooed man. “He promises me an end to fear and
loathing and all the bad things. He keeps his word, as long as I do what he
says.”

“Listen,
you don’t have to do this.”

“Listen,
you don’t have to do this,” the man echoed. “No one ever thinks of other things
to say. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Like fucking parrots.”

Turning,
David saw the glint of a blade in the man’s hand. He walked forward, turning
the knife over and around without effort. He knelt and looked into David’s
eyes.

“Maybe
you’ll be different, but I doubt it.” This close, David could see the bulge in
his jeans. “He likes to watch the things I do to the ones who disappoint.”

Turning
the knife, he smacked the bottom of the blade into David’s face. His lip broke
in a spray of blood; the blow was enough to dizzy him. David was still reeling
when he hit him again from the other side, catching him just under the eye and
breaking the skin.

“Just a
warning, just a warning,” the tattooed man told him as he held the blade up
between them, close to David’s nose.

Eyes
watering, mouth filling with blood, David nodded in understanding.

“Good,
they all do that too.” The man cut the straps around David’s ankles and dragged
him up. “He likes to taste the blood first anyway.”

1999

The
acoustics were distorted down here, and Sasha wasn’t sure if it was the drugs
or if it really did sound like that. The music thrummed, warbled into something
different from how it really sounded. There were feet and feet of concrete
overhead, which should’ve muted all sound.

“Weird,”
Alena mused. “Place must be falling apart.”

There were
enough chunks of rubble in the corridor they were in to support the idea.

The air
was different too; heavy and dry, like how Sasha imagined a crypt or tomb might
feel. High as he was, he didn’t like this, but Alena seemed unworried and he
tried to take some comfort there.

They came
into a room where the lights from the dance floor, what must have been meters
overhead, flashed through. It didn’t make sense how it was possible — some mad
alignment of gaps and chinks in the structure, perhaps — but that’s what they
saw.

“Whoa,”
Alena said, stumbling to a stop. She turned and squeezed his hips, letting the
glow stick drop to the floor.

She pulled
him closer, tugging him forward, spearing his mouth with her tongue. Then she
wasn’t pulling so much as he was pushing, leaning into it as much as he could
without knocking her down. He was so hard it hurt, despite his balls having
retreated somewhere else entirely.

Alena
pushed his jacket off and then his shirt over his head, gently leading him
lower with her mouth, forcing his to seek hers. Underneath the fusty smell of
the dust and bad air, he could smell her and, he was sure, the drugs. They’d
been sweating buckets since taking the pills — maybe it was some kind of
heightened reaction? Sasha was new to this, but there was a definite tang to
her odor.

One of his
hands molded to one of her breasts. He tugged at the side of her shirt, sliding
it up as she had his. He didn’t bother unfastening her bra, but pulled the cup
down and found one nipple with his mouth. Sasha felt more than heard her gasp.
They sank to the floor, his head moving back and forth between her breasts,
rubbing their springy resistance against his face.

Alena’s
own hands were busy. She dug in with her nails, looking for the swollen ache
between his legs. Scrabbling at the remains of their clothing, they cast off
what they still wore. The hard floor beneath them laid individual strands of
coldness on their skin.

Sasha
didn’t think, didn’t worry, didn’t consider if he was doing any of it right. He
just did it, because he understood somewhere in the back of his mind that he
might not get another chance.

Alena
straddled him, nudging at his penis with her nose, where it twitched and
tightened. She ran the tip of her tongue along and around it, then raised
herself up and slid down, impaling herself on the shaft.

It didn’t
last long, but the high broke down the flow of time so it didn’t matter. Sasha
lost all sense of separateness. He was deep inside her, deeper than he reckoned
possible.

When he
came, she shuddered to a halt on top of him, grinding fitfully to tease as much
out of him as she could. It hurt for a moment, but not in a bad way.

She lifted
herself up again and turned to face him, legs spread to either side of his body
and his limp dick.

“Why did
you face away?” he asked. Alena shrugged. “Didn’t think it mattered.”

His skin
felt warm and wet where her legs were parted against his body. Absently, she
licked one thumb and slid it down to her vagina.

“You want
to watch me?”

Thinking
it would impolite to say anything, he only nodded and let her guide his hand to
her breast. She spread his fingers and rubbed them against her nipple, which
went taut at his touch.

“Fuck.” He
could feel his cock stirring again, however impossible he thought that to be.

She moaned
and her thumb stroked faster and faster. She gyrated, grinding against his hips
and stomach. Behind and around them, shafts of light flashed through the insane
and impossible gaps in the ceiling, framing her for brief seconds.

Something
scraped against the floor, but Sasha ignored it, almost never heard it. Took it
for her foot knocking against a loose piece of stone.

Alena was
gasping, her mouth making
Os,
first silent and then not. Her head came
down towards his, her mouth brushing against his chest and neck before it found
his lips.

Their
teeth clicked, but neither of them noticed.

Sasha
heard grunting noises, but couldn’t tell if they came from his throat or hers.
His chest was warm and wet, and Alena started jerking as she came.

He’d
closed his eyes when she came down to kiss him, then he opened them, thinking
she’d do the same to see his reaction. That was when he saw the shadow, lit for
brief seconds by the lights snaking through the imperfect stone work.

The shadow
loomed over them, and he realized the wetness was Alena’s own blood pouring
over him.

1916

Whenever
we look at it and turn away, it reconstitutes itself. We think it has always
been doing this, likely since before it arrived here. The precautions and
warnings now no longer seem so farfetched as they once did. Maria, I do not
know what we have brought here, but I fear for what it means.

Maria, if
you do read this, I urge you to stop here. I know you will not, but I have to
say it.

Today in
the lab, we subjected the rock to a simple test, only to determine its reactive
properties under different conditions. It does no good to say what we subjected
it to, or rather planned to, because it reacted first.

I have
difficulty in reconciling what happened in my mind. I will try to lay it out
here in the hope that clarity will present itself.

Osif went
inside first, with our two assistants between him, myself, and Medvedev. It was
early morning, but we were ready – I would not say eager – to subject the rock
to tests. As much as it repelled and perhaps terrified us, we wanted to know
more. We’d spoken the night before on just such a topic.

“It
displays no sign of sentience,” said Medvedev.

We three
were in his rooms and it was late at night; I remember looking at the clock on
the mantle, and it was near midnight.

“Are you
suggesting an animal reaction, absent higher intelligence?” asked Osif.
“Because it definitely seems to display some sort of cunning in what it does,
wouldn’t you agree?”

All of us
felt it now, whenever we turned our backs on the rock. We knew it was moving,
reconstituting itself into something
other,
though what and for what
purpose were unknown to us.

“It killed
before.” I’d wanted to phrase it as a question, but it came out wrong.

“The
Institute was unclear, exactly, which we can take for a tacit ‘yes’ on their
part.”

We
discussed it in circles for the rest of the night before retiring. Now, we were
making our way inside the chamber, wearing such protective clothing as the fort
provided us.

The rock
was as it had been the night before, when we had left it to its own devices.
One of the assistants — I confess I never learned his name — went to the rock
and readied to move it. I happened to be looking in his direction when it
happened.

Maria, I
saw it, even if the others did not.