North: Chapter 6

Acold coming they had of it, through hard travelling and a blizzard which bit into their cheeks and stung their eyes, the snow made violent by the more violent winds.

The two Finders came slowly up the side of the mountain, their tread weary and leaving deep dark prints in the white canvas for only moments before being covered again. Their wide hats were pulled low to protect their faces as best they could, their long coats drawn tight to their bodies. They travelled with the stiff-backed determination of men who have never been so cold.

For the most part, their journeying had been in silence, all of it in darkness, but now the smaller and slighter of them spoke, his voice raised to make himself heard above the screaming of the wind.

“I hate the North,” said Flynn and he bru

When the lights came on Flynn screamed but Lucas was already crouching behind the low pillars of the balustrade, scoping the room for movement or threat. Finding none, he slowly stood up. Flynn looked sheepishly at Lucas.

“Sorry,” he said. “If there’s one thing scarier than being in a well-lit asylum surrounded by bodies piled to the ceiling, a killer on the loose and the lights going off, it’s being in a pitch-black asylum surrounded by bodies piled to the ceiling, a killer on the loose, and the lights coming on.” He looked at the gun in his hand, as if noticing it for the first time. “I’m amazed I didn’t ****in’ shoot myself.”

Lucas had tilted his head to one side and seemed to be concentrating.

“I can hear a Knowledge terminal.”

“You can?”

“On the ground floor, through two, maybe three, doors.”

“I’m always impressed you can do stuff like that,” said Flynn. “You go first.”

They went down the staircase closest to them, Lucas first, then Flynn, their eyes mobile and vigilant. On reaching the ground floor, Lucas gestured to a wide door on the far side of the vestibule underneath the landing where they had previously been standing.

With care and with caution, they moved towards the door. Lucas holstered the pistol in his left hand, opened the door gingerly and waited. Nothing happened and, hearing no movement, he opened the door wide and stepped through, Flynn at his heels.

They were in another corridor, this one wide and painted an antiseptic white with harsh tubular lighting running along the high ceiling. In front of them, there were three sets of iron bars, staggered at intervals, crossing the width of the corridor and running from floor to ceiling. They were painted white and each had a gate set into it which lay ominously ajar. Along the side wall there were wide heavy doors, all of which were also open.

Lucas gestured silently to the first door on the left and they began edging forward through the first set of bars. Once through, they pressed their backs to the wall and inched forward towards the open doorway. Now Flynn could hear the low hum of a computer from the room.

Flynn stopped behind Lucas who waited at the side of the door, out of sight of anyone who might be in the room. Lucas counted extravagantly with his free hand – one, two, three – and then they were bursting into the room, Lucas moving to the left, Flynn to the right, guns out and sweeping the room.

It was empty.

The room was small in width and length and a large round table sat in the centre, dominating. On top of it was a Knowledge port, small and white, its Knowledge rippling and changing the colour of the air above it like a mirage. A chair, some shelves with books on them, white paint on the walls. This was all.

Flynn looked at Lucas and Lucas looked back, exchanging the puzzlement that precedes relief.

Flynn was just lowering his pistol when the creature that had attached itself to the ceiling dropped on top of him. Wrapping one of its pink and sinewy limbs around his neck, it trailed him from the room propelled in haste by its other seven. Such was its speed that it was gone by the time Lucas reacted. He stepped quickly out of the room, now both pistols at-the-ready, but the creature and Flynn were already distant, gone from the corridor, through the three sets of iron bars and midway across the vestibule.

Lucas dropped to all-fours and ran, his back arched so much like a great cat, the pistols in his hands clacking against the floor-tiles as his legs pushed him forward. He covered the distance of five hundred yards in fewer than five breaths but still by the time he entered the vestibule, the creature had begun to scale one of the walls and was several feet above the tiles. Flynn flailed behind it, his neck within short seconds and narrow angles of being broken.

Lucas broke to his feet in the centre of the vestibule, pistols up and searching for shots of opportunity. He found none. Were he to shoot, the risk was great that he would hit Flynn.

The creature continued to scuttle up the wall. The breath gone from his body, Flynn’s face was the red and purple of bad bruising. Nevertheless, his hands floundered around him in search of purchase on anything he could use.

Presently, they found rope.

A long silk rope hung down from the ceiling to the floor, a means of closing the canopy-sized curtains which would cover the vestibule’s windows. Flynn seized it. Then, all the while struggling against gravity and airlessness, he managed to wrap the rope around the limb which held him fast, and made a loop. The loop held and the rope’s free end fell slack against the tiled floor.

Lucas was upon it almost immediately. Inside a moment, his guns were holstered and he had pounced across the vestibule, seizing the rope with both of his hands. The rope went taut around the creature’s limb, creating a tight knot and the jolt caused it to release its grip on Flynn’s neck.

Flynn fell the twenty feet onto one of the abandoned gurneys which was covered with padding. The gurney rolled a short distance ‘til it hit a wall and stopped. Flynn lay there momentarily, a heap of coat and hat and legs, but unharmed. He sat up quickly, massaging breath back into his throat.

Lucas, meanwhile, held fast to the rope and thus the creature. His face was a map of concentration and physical effort, and his neck strained with veins. The creature hung suspended by the loop of rope, four of its limbs clutching the wall.

Flynn stood up, fumbling his pistol into a shaking hand, and crossed the short distance to Lucas, unsteadily training the weapon on the creature.

“What,” said Lucas, holding the rope and looking up at the creature, “the **** are you supposed to be?”

The creature looked down at them. While four of its limbs held onto the wall, another was held prisoner and the remaining three scrabbled frantically against the rope in an attempt to loosen or tear it.

It appeared to be a giant spider covered with human skin and with a man’s head attached to it body. Its eight limbs were long and sinewy and multi-jointed, culminating in gnarled human hands. The body was that of a man, complete with white ribs poking through its pink skin, and a dangling penis. The head was bald and glistening, the face bony with thin skin scarcely covering it, and its large pink eyes swam with intelligence and cunning. It was grinning.

Flynn’s hands, and subsequently the gun, grew steady.

“Right, you psychotic bastard,” he said. “That’s where you’re staying.”

The creature ceased its struggling and glanced at the limb trapped by the rope. It gazed at it for several moments and then back at Lucas and Flynn. Its grin widened and a rivulet of drool traced its way down the bony pink chin, glistening beneath the lights of the vestibule.

Two of the free limbs gripped the imprisoned one tightly and the last took hold of the silk rope. Then the creature wrenched. There was a tearing and cracking sound as it tore the imprisoned limb from its body. Trailing ragged strands of tissue and dripping a dark-pink viscous liquid, the limb came free from its shoulder and the creature dropped it down through the air and onto the floor where it bounced wetly on the tiles.

The creature’s grin widened again and thick beads of sweat rolled down its forehead onto its face. Lucas stumbled backwards, the tension of the rope suddenly altered, and fought to regain his balance. Flynn stood motionless, his jaw working, but uselessly.

The creature, now free of the rope, gripped the wall with its remaining seven limbs, and scuttled up it, faster than the eyes of the dazed Lucas and Flynn could follow, then upside-down across the ceiling, down the opposite wall and onto the balcony that the Finders had stood upon minutes previously.

Lucas reacted first, loping across the vestibule and then, in a manner not dissimilar to the creature, scaling the wall thirty feet to the balcony. Throwing himself over the stone railing and onto the balcony, he set off running down the corridor by which he and Flynn had entered, in pursuit of the creature.

Flynn took the long way, running across the vestibule, up the steps, onto the balcony and into the corridor. Immediately, he could see Lucas’ silhouette framed against the open door made bright by moonlight, perfectly still other than the wind rippling his hair and coat. He ran up to Lucas and followed the other Finder’s gaze.

The creature had crossed the snow-covered landscape and gained the foot of the high wall. With little effort, it scaled the red brick and poised on top of it for a few moments where it turned its head back towards the Finders and grinned. Lucas and Flynn saw its teeth glinting in the moonlight.

Then it leapt from the wall and was gone from their sight.