Descent (Part Ten)

Blinking, trying to push through a fog that had fallen over my thoughts, I struggled to understand what I was seeing. Looking for all the world like they were at mass, or waiting for the bride to emerge at a wedding, rank on rank of people knelt with heads bowed. Each one facing the man at the front. The ranks were not perfect, holes stood out reminding me of gaps in a smile.

The room was silent.

Silent except for the perky, almost joyful voice that had ‘welcomed’ Mary and I in. Taking her hand, I pulled Mary forward. She was still a little unsteady on her feet.

I didn’t know how exhausting fighting could be, and I still worried about those gashes on her. Even with everything I could do, and thank God that Melody had brought that first aid kit, she needed more than I could give her.

Ahead of us, up a flight of intricately carved stone stairs, Mr. Sage stood silhouetted by cauldrons of pale fire. He seemed to be waiting for something, hands high over his head, perfectly still. Following the direction of his gaze, I stared up into the roiling darkness overhead. A statue stood there in pride of place; massive and shrouded in shadows that clung to it almost like a robe or cloak.

I couldn’t make out anything clearly, maybe it was human, maybe not. Sharp lines and sweeping curves poked out before the oily shadows shifted to cover it again. Something red glared out of the darkness, right around where its head might have been. So high above my own head that I wondered if it was even within the enormous cave or else staring down at me from… somewhere beyond.

“Deary me,” said the chipper voice, like thunder in the silent room. “But you look an awful state. Don’t tell me you’ve put in all that effort just to join our congregation?”

A woman appeared at the bottom of the steps leading up to where Mr. Sage stood. She was young, barely out of her twenties; tall, with perfectly smooth skin on a distractingly beautiful face over broad shoulders. Black hair tied back in a neat pony tail, she was dressed in business casual, looking almost like a teacher.

Beside me, Mary sucked in a breath through her teeth. I spun, weird woman and Mr. Sage forgotten, running through a short list of emergency first aid just in case there was something more I could do for her. But she barely seemed to notice me, eyes locked on the strange woman, upper lip peeled back in a snarl, beagle’s head cane locked in a bloodless grip.

Clearly she recognized the woman, though I had no idea how. Maybe she had been a substitute teacher or something? It wasn’t anyone I knew from Adam, but Mary and I didn’t have many of the same classes, so it was possible. Then again, I knew every chaperone who had come on this trip with us, so who the Hell could this woman be?

“Ah,” she said, almost cooing at us. “You remember me? How lovely. I must say that it has been a while since we last met, Mary dearest. Did you ever manage all those push ups I assigned you? And this little thing,” the voice changed, growing lower, more gravely? No. Sultry. “She’s cute, dear. I do so hope you’re treating her right.”

“Sherman,” Mary spat the name.

Spinning back to face the stranger, I tried desperately to understand what I was seeing. For some reason, I knew the stories. Built like a house, a terror to any breakdowns in team discipline, and yet… and yet I had never seen her before. I could not even remember hearing her name before Sasha disappeared.

“Sasha!” the word burst out of me and I tried to surge forward. If that really was Mrs. Sherman, then Sasha had to be here, she just had to. Unless she was dead - which I refused to believe for even a second - then she would be here. Isn’t that what everyone said? That she had gone with Mrs. Sherman? Mary held me back, hand vice-like on mine, but I screamed Sasha’s name again at the top of my lungs, hoping to break whatever spell made it so damn quiet in that cave.

“Yes, dear,” crooned Mrs. Sherman. “Sasha’s here, you’ve gone and found her. Brilliantly done. Why don’t you join her and stop making such a fuss? You’re late after all, and it’s rude to interrupt a service in progress.”

Join. Yes. That’s what we were here for, to join in. The point of the trip was to see the altar and there it was, now Mr. Sage was just waiting for us to take our seats so that he could teach us something. That’s what he was, a teacher. Again I tried to walk forward, following Mrs. Sherman’s pointing finger to a gap in one of the ranks of people kneeling before the altar.

Hey, kneeling isn’t too weird. Whenever I would go into a big fancy church or something and walk in front of their altar, I would do that bowing thing just to show respect for others’ beliefs, why not here too? It’s not as if I had any reason to be afraid. What was holding me back?

Turning, I saw Mary’s face. Her mouth was set in a grim line, eyes locked on Mrs. Sherman. That struck me as kind of childish, I knew that Sherman wasn’t exactly the most popular teacher in the world, but what was the point of causing a scene here and now? It didn’t make sense. Also, I wondered where Mary’s shirt had gone, she was wearing one of the athletic uniform tees. Cute, but not what I thought she should be wearing.

I looked down at myself. The blazer around my shoulders was too big for me, had my parents ordered me a size up again just in case I grew? Pretty sure I was out of that stage of life, why would they have done that? Wait, no. Mary wasn’t wearing hers, and I was wearing one that was too big. Maybe it was hers?

My heart beat faster at the thought. Then faster again when I tried to remember when I had come to be wearing it. If I couldn’t remember something that significant, then maybe I should talk to a doctor.

Not finding anything in my memory, I focused on Mary again, stopped trying to pull away from her. Her shirt was gone, ‘destroyed’ the thought wandered around my head. I had, taken it off? For what reason? There must have been – why was she holding Mr. Sage’s cane?

She was talking, shouting something at Mrs. Sherman. That didn’t make sense, Mary and I weren’t close, much as that thought caused a sinking feeling in my gut for some reason, but she wasn’t a talk-back type of person. At least not normally, something must have really ticked her off. The only question is what?

And why was she holding that cane? Who did it belong to? For some reason, I could just recall Mr. Sage holding it once, but that didn’t make sense. He was up those stairs, tall and young, why would he need a cane?

Young?

Spinning on my heel, I looked past Mrs. Sherman and up at Mr. Sage. He was moving now, hands doing something I couldn’t quite make out as the shadows dripped off the enormous statue. Falling down like molasses, stretching down towards the table.

But Mr. Sage wasn’t supposed to be young. He was old, slow, crochety when his decaying mind forgot something he should know.

“Who the Hell are you,” I shouted at Mrs. Sherman, breaking out of my brain lock. “And what did you do with Sasha?”

“You need to work on your listening skills, deary,” said Mrs. Sherman, slowly walking down the long aisle between the ranks of kneeling people. Girls in St. Martha’s blazers on my left, and boys in black, familiar looking uniforms, on my right. They evoked military dress tunics, ringing a bell of some kind in my head. Had I seen them on TV?

“I’ve never seen you before.”

“That’s not a surprise, dear. I wasn’t around for very long. Old Sage was the best fit for you, my skills were better put to work elsewhere,” she giggled. A high, girlish sound that did not quite fit her. Almost as though it belonged to someone else, sloppily stitched on the way dubbing works in foreign films. “And so they were! I don’t think Sage could have done half what I managed to in my position, and vice versa. Really, isn’t it so important to have skilled friends?”

“Amy,” Mary’s voice was like iron. “Don’t get any closer.”

“Clever girl,” crooned Mrs. Sherman. “Always such a quick learner when new plays were added to the roster. Shame you never applied yourself like that in class, Sage told me all about your less than stellar performance. Quite below your abilities if you don’t mind me saying so.”

She was still walking towards us, keeping up an inane, pleasant chatter. All the while, over her shoulder, the darkness dripped lower, almost like some enormous dog was drooling at the promise of a treat.

“Well, you’ve made it this far. Why not join in? You never know, the Chained Ones might yet have a use for you.”

Sherman was only a few meters away from us, still smiling. It was grotesque, I felt like she wasn’t seeing me, or even Mary, instead she looked at us like a starving person does at a bowl of stew. She was starving, desperate for anything she could consume. She held out her hand, the request to join them hanging heavily in the air.

I wanted to answer that request. Something deep, almost primal, drove me towards those ranks of keeling bodies.

“Yes, dear,” crooned Sherman again, was there something off about her face? It did not seem to fit her, like it had previously belonged to someone else. “Come, join us. The ceremony is almost ready to begin. We would be so happy if you became one of us.”

“Amy,” Mary’s hand tightened on my wrist. “Amy get behind me.”

“Oh, the brave hero now are we? Well, well, seems I judged correctly, doesn’t it? Why don’t you stop pretending, dear? I know what you must have done out there,” she waved vaguely over my shoulder towards the still open door to the room of corpses. “Seems you made quite a mess. Tutt, tutt, still reading far too many of those Archive stories, I see. It isn’t polite you know, leaving detritus around for others to clean up.”

Sherman was so close to us now, overly pretty smile still in place. But I noticed something about her that brought up the memory of Mr. Sage moving out of the way of a swinging cane with a silver beagle’s head handle, when she moved, it was like she flowed.

The sight was almost mesmerizing. Floating, fleeting steps that barely seemed to really touch the ground at all. And the way she walked, it was almost like she was made of liquid held in a human shape.

Behind her, Mr. Sage shouted in a language I didn’t understand. Over his head, the dripping darkness froze, quivered, and broke apart. Individual tentacles of oily black split from one another descending faster and faster until they pooled on the ground. Like wet sand poured through fingers at a beach, the blackness started to rise from its puddles, just solid enough to retain a crude shape.

“Ahh,” said Mrs. Sherman, sounding for all the world like a contented cat purring, “Shunsuke, so glad you could join us.”

I barely even heard Mary’s shouted "fuck!" or the sound of wrestling. My attention was rivetted on Mr. Sage; again he was still, silent, with arms upraised. I got the sense that he was waiting, I could almost see the tension in his arms, the micro-shakes that show extreme excitement. Something was coming, and if the creatures from the dark were anything to go by, then it was going to be bad.

“Amy!” Mary shouted from behind me. I heard something clatter to the ground, and Mary screamed.

Turning slowly, like I was under water, I caught a glimpse of a familiar figure stand from where she had been kneeling in the ranks before the altar. Height, shape, hair, everything told me exactly who she was. But again, she was not herself. I could see her hands for the first time since she shoved them in her pockets back in the atrium.

The skin was moving.

“Shunsuke, my love,” cooed Mrs. Sherman. “Get her in line, please. The show is about to start.”

Mary screamed.

Sasha walked into the aisle separating the sexes and came face to face with a dark haired boy wearing one of the black blazers. Neither one nodded, or shook hands, or acknowledged each other in any way. They just turned on the spot and started walking towards the altar in perfect unison. Mr. Sage had lowered his arms and turned towards his congregation.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Sasha, despite Mary’s shouts and struggling from behind me. I barely even registered Mrs. Sherman’s girlish giggling. Sasha, she was right there, right in front of me. But for some reason, I didn’t see my friend anymore. I could only see the writhing, gut wrenching mass of black lines that had consumed her hands, snaking up her arms and disappearing into the rolled sleeves.

“Welcome,” said Mr. Sage. “To the Feast of the Chained.”

-0-

"A Community Story [Challenge]" By: Donna Fox (The whole inspiration for this entire series)

"Descent: A Community Story Challenge" by: Yours Truly

"Descent (Part Two)" by: Mackenzie Davis (who is amazing, and everyone should read)

"Descent (Part Three)" by: *politely raises hand* me

"Descent (Part Four)" by: this dude right here.

"Descent (Part Five)" by: some guy named Alex, seems cool.

"Descent (Part Six)" by - drumroll please.... me!

"Descent (Part Seven)" by: is he still doing this? Yes! I am :)

"Descent (Part Eight)" by who's got two thumbs and a writing addiction? This guy!

"Descent (Part Nine)" retrieved from the jaws of the Archive itself by: the last shreds of my sanity

"Descent (Part Eleven)" coming soon to a creator page near you!