Descent: Part Thirteen

Sasha was nearly at the top step. The strange boy beside her still in lock step.

Mary wasn’t where I had left her, instead she now sat with her back against the wall and was staring at the bodies of Sherman and Shunsuke. I slowed, torn between trying to help her and sprinting, close as I could manage, down the aisle. But she waved me off.

Her colour was already better, and I saw the cane lying abandoned on the ground where she had been. Apparently, she thought she was cured. That was fine by me, so I took her advice and stooped on my way past to sweep up the cane. The movement sent spasms of pain radiating out from the tiny wound in my stomach, spiking through my body like the rays of some horrible sun.

Fear of infection faded to the background and I got my balance back and stormed down the aisle. It sat somewhere next to worry about Mary, still present but not something I could focus on right now.

“What you can’t do anything about doesn’t matter in the moment,” that was the voice of her Scout Leader. “If you spend all your time worrying about what you can’t change, you won’t notice the things you can.”

Things I could change, things I could affect. What were they?

I could feel the weight of choice weighing me down as I ran. Combining with the aftershocks of my cleansing to drag at my limbs and make my lungs feel like lead. Water was the only thing I could summon to mind, Sasha had reacted with something like terror when I suggested washing off whatever was wrong with her hand. Maybe that was a way to save her?

At the steps, I expected Sage to say something. I was bearing down on his precious ritual, intent on stopping it, but he didn’t seem to notice me.

Looking up at him, I saw that his eyes were open but staring at nothing. He was still talking, words I didn’t understand still flowing out of his mouth. They seemed to be coming faster, my foot landed on the first step and nothing happened. He kept talking, hands out stretched to the piles of blackish sludge growing from the same thing dripping from the ceiling.

Sasha was nearly to the top. I took the steps two at a time, forcing the screaming of my abs out of my head by focusing on her. My eyes slipped from Sasha’s back, focusing on the piles of sludge. They were taller than Sage now, rippling and flowing like water but solid. It almost broke my brain to watch, they were the same as I remembered the lines on Sasha’s hand. The exact same jumble of ripples and lines flowing against and through each other.

Acting on instinct, I lunged forward with the cane and hooked the beagle’s head around her ankle. Heaving on it brought her crashing to the ground, pulling her hand out of the boy’s who continued walking. She tried to get to her feet but I slammed into her, careful not to touch any exposed skin, and hauled a water bottle out of the open bag still on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling the bottle lid off, ignoring the spikes of pain from my stomach as it pressed into Sasha’s back. “I hope this doesn’t hurt too much.”

I emptied the bottle over her head, and she screamed.

The sound was inhuman, something out of a nightmare had by children. High and piercing, undulating and warping its sound. It dug straight into my teeth and sat there, pulsing pain down to the tips of my fingers. But she stopped struggling to her feet.

Writhing underneath me, she twisted and bucked, trying to throw me off. Holding on with one hand, I pulled a shirt out of the bag and threw it onto her back. I’ve no idea where the strength came from, but as Sage’s voice grew louder and louder, the words coming faster than the world’s most famous rap star, the only thought in my head was that I would not lose Sasha. That I’d never let go.

Still fighting her, I pulled out a full bottle of water and tore the thin plastic lid off with my teeth. The strain on my molars was lost in the howling scream from Sasha, the deafening chant from Sage, and the nearly blinding pain from my stomach. Dumping it onto the shirt, some drops splashed onto her drawing out more screams.

“Oh stop whining,” I growled, fighting to keep my grip on her. “Mary didn’t bitch this much and I stuck a silver brick into her guts.” More fighting, almost as though the whatever it was controlling her knew that something was coming. Her elbow kicked back, driving into the soft issue of my bicep and nearly dislodging me.

My fist connected with the back of her head, driving it into the floor and stopping the constant thrashing for just long enough for me to grab the now soaking shirt and wrap it forcefully around her outstretched hand.

The world became only screaming, agonized pain. My vision blurred and I had to fight ever instinct to tear my hands away from her and clap them over my ears. Tears streamed down my face and I scrubbed the hand viciously, muttering, “take that you fucking worms! Choke on it!”

Flipping the shirt around, I latched on to her other hand scrubbed at it.

Something was coming away from her, peeling off in layers. It felt almost like peeling a wet, screaming onion, scraping layers of skin off my friend. But it was the only thing I could think of, the only thing that seemed to be working. Fear started to rise again as her trembling slowed down, this might kill her. Is that what I wanted?

Of course not. But it was better than whatever Sage wanted her for. It had to be.

I grabbed the back of her shirt and heaved. The buttons on the blazer and shirt snapped off, both coming away from her and effectively locking her sharp elbows in place as I readujusted my position to include the fabric in holding her down. Ignoring the lack of any support straps, I threw the shirt away, taking advantage of the brief moment of confused calm to soak another shirt and scrub madly at the trembling lines that snaked up her arms and were creeping onto her shoulders. Nothing would stop me.

Even if I killed her, even if tearing this parasite off my friend piece by piece failed, at least it would be her that died. Not some shambling monster. At least she couldn’t be a sacrifice to Sage’s Feast of the Damned or whatever it was. I would either save her, or keep away from something worse.

She finally stopped shuddering, the terrible wailing falling silent and her eyes closed.

Gasping for breath, I looked down at her, checking for any sign of the black lines. If they were there, then they might spread again. And I would have to force her to go through the ordeal of getting clean again. Taking her by one shoulder, I flipped her over and, using a patch of still clean shirt, scrubbed at what I thought looked like the lines. Her skin was red and raw, almost like she had a terrible sun burn, but I didn’t care. Pulling out a third bottle of water, I carefully poured it over her, then spun her face down again and repeated the process on her back. She reacted, but barely, the water hopefully finding patches of infection I had missed.

God but I hoped she was the only one I’d have to save this way. I wouldn’t have enough water to do more than maybe another two or three at most.

“What can you do, focus on that,” the voice in my head didn’t belong to any one person. Everyone always gave me the same advice, but this time it reminded me of my father. “Once you’ve done what you can, move on to the next thing or you’ll get stuck.”

Gasping for breath – when had I started doing that? – I leaned back and pulled out the largest spare shirt I had and draped it across Sasha’s immobile body. Only two left of those, I needed to make them count. That boy was the next thing I could do. He was the next piece of the puzzle I was certain of it, if I could interrupt Sage’s ritual by taking him out of the equation, then maybe I could figure out a way to get out of here.

Or at least, maybe I could break whatever spell kept everyone else still and silent in their neatly ordered ranks down below.

I looked up the last few steps and found Sage’s eyes boring into me. He had stopped his chanting and the boy now stood beside him, back ramrod straight and eyes forward.

“That was inconsiderate,” muttered sage, taking one step towards me. “Do you have any idea just how much of a fucking inconvenience you’ve proven to be? Taking out Sherman was a favour, so I let you run your little coward heart away. Why bother with one stupid little girl, I thought. It’s not as if she’d be stupid enough to come back. How wrong I was.

“Not even the good sense you were born with. And now you’ve gone and delayed the Feast. Honestly, what do I have to do to convince you to just run away? But no. No, no it was all to much for you. Had to play the little hero. Now,” the boy took two steps forward and held out his hand to one of the pillars of sludge. “Now I have to do things the slow way. Kids,” he sneered, “always providing that special kind of help that makes the job take twice as long.”

A long undulating strand of darkness detached itself from the pile of sludge in front of the boy, stretching towards him like a curious octopus’s tentacle under water. Before my eyes it rippled, shifted, a sound like knuckles the size of a mountain cracking nearly split my ear drums again and suddenly the black mass was a hand.

Looking like something an AI might have shat out, it had seven fingers of inconsistent and constantly shifting lengths and thickness. I barely gasped before the hand shot forward with all the suddenness of a trap door spider leaping out of hiding and latched onto the boy’s outstretched hand.

Then the screaming started.

-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 XD

"Descent (Part Ten)" discovered on an archaeological dig, that's why it took so long, by a certain very tall dude with bad time management skills ;)

"Descent (Part Eleven)" recovered from among the lost tombs of the forbidden libraries in Rome by this blue-eyed guy

"Descent (Part Twelve)" by: one who blesses the muses only when their favour is upon him