Chapter 47: Endless Shriek

The texture she gripped did not mesh to any existent idea of of form or cohesion, but Violet did not let its strangeness manifest into hesitation. She grabbed and wrenched, as if she had her hands around the throat of some dread beast. In a way she almost did, and the idea of that let rise a fierce defiance.

Then the influence jolted and out from its heart came a sudden and noiseless shriek. The world crashed into place around her, the light of her lantern discordant and the space past all things writhing, seeming to bulge at the edges of reality. The pressure of the influence had fallen to chaos and in the darkness around her, in the places where false animals stood and others had been transmuted into melted ribbons of running flesh, a tide of realization and pain and horror had begun to rise, for the influence was no longer fully in control.

Just as it had knocked her off kilter for so long, at last she had struck back and done exactly the same thing. The initial flavor of its reaction reminded her of what had come when she’d burnt the creeping tendrils of fungus and the decaying multiplication of formerly false animals they’d proliferated out of. But there it had seized upon her, and now it could do no such thing for it could not comprehend how she had, from one distinct place, reached out and touched it so horribly.

The world was spinning too much for joy to come and Violet realized that she was on her knees, lantern light gone splotchy with crimson, for her nose was bleeding again and there were runnels of red flooding the spaces between her fingers.

The hallway before her did not sit right, even relative to where it had been before, and under her knees Violet realized that she could feel a surge of writhing motion, the disparate intentions of a thousand entities all becoming apparent, tearing the false unity of the influence’s domain asunder. And the false animals were awakening too. Not all of them, Violet could see rippling swathes of blankness passing over the emaciated ranks, but it could not be maintained. A stink of terror, like burning metal, filled the hallway and the influence could not understand why its mastery had been upset so completely.

Violet managed to stand, knees blotched with something warm that she did not want to think about, and staggered sideways into a wall, the material singing beneath her touch with the wailing calls of a hundred thousand voices. They buffeted her like the winds of a hurricane and through all of them Violet could barely allow her own thoughts to cohere.

They came very simply, in staccato bursts. Her companions, her friends were still elsewhere, down and down and down. She had to get to them.

Violet found her fire poker and squeezed it so hard her hand hurt, the iron tip flashing black as her lantern light fizzed. Before her the numb sweep of a false dog shivered into nothingness and Violet saw crimson threads of fungus pulse like overloaded veins in the spaces behind the dead dog’s eyes, attempting resurrection. The flesh of the walls was pulling away from itself and signals crashed together like bouquets of sparks. Violet could not quite tell where the noise was physical and where it remained confined to the space past the world, for she could hear cries for help and formless shrieks of terror. And behind it all the influence shivered like a freshly struck bell and could not entirely ascertain the limits of its old domain, for the noise was all too much to bear.

But it was reconciling all the same, Violet knew this, and when the pale, jelly like bulk of something akin to a deer rose from out of the darkness in the center of the disintegrating cordon she reached once again, and this time did not grab but formed what she hoped was a fist and plunged it down like the arc of a falling star, or a frozen shard of Glow come to strike retributive terror into the hearts of all things evil and wrong.

Again she was jolted back, and again the influence shrieked, its hold falling dark across another swathe of domain, the refinery echoing with resurgent cries. The deer seemed to burst, though Violet couldn’t be sure for the light was not good and her own eyes did not wish to fully understand what they saw. When she staggered forward, there was nothing left but strings and wet, tacky strands of a fibrous red material that she thought was moving.

She hoped the false animals would flee, but so many simply stood and howled for they could not understand what had happened to them or how they had come to be in this place, in the dark so far from home, surrounded by an endless tide of newly awakened horrors. And the ones in the wall, though so many no longer possessed active thought or anything beyond instincts trapped within nerves, they twitched and attempted escape, for that was the only thing left to do. Tendons and distended bands of pale muscles writhed helplessly where they had been bonded to fuel soaked concrete, and Violet thought about scraping them from the refinery’s real walls, but knew that would do nothing. Eyes stared and within them burned coals of formless terror, frail vestiges of thought remnant to the original owners calling help help help.

She could not stop, and when the influence seemed again to gather up and she could hear the stumbling gallop of falseness from the blackness ahead, for there was a space at the bottom of the stairs and gnashing teeth besides, Violet reached out again and smote the influence down and screamed when she did this, for it hurt so badly, but she could not stop, her friends had to be somewhere ahead, down at the bottom of everything.

Down and down and down.

And there was a newness conglomerating, some arcane realization taking hold, the influence saw now that she could reach out across impossible space and strike it just as it struck other creatures. There was a hesitance within that, something approaching what she might know as fear, and Violet took a vengeful glee as she stepped down the slithery wetness of steps that whimpered at her touch, but whatever conqueror’s pleasure she felt could not endure, for there was simply too much awfulness and she felt a twinge of agony in her heart for each step she took.

Were her heart harder she might have hated the influence for creating such a mockery of space and form, but hate had no use here, there was only that which would suppress the poison.

More deadness further below, fuel dripping from places in the ceiling and searing away spaces where the flesh had gone rotten. She had seen this before but it was much more severe now and in the dying light of her hissing lantern flesh flaked like soft, gray scales from the walls and gathered in pus scummed pools upon areas of the floor that sagged. The false animals which appeared were past the point of reason, whatever realness existed at their heart was so burned out that nothing could reach it. They more stumbled than walked and opened jaws that held no teeth. When Violet pushed them away with the blunt end of her fire poker, the metal there split flesh as colorless as water and they collapsed into themselves, form lost in an instant.

Nothingness frothed at the edge of the air and Violet blinked and blinked, the fumes of spilt fuel gathering at the back of her throat, head pounding, her face sticky with blood and hands trembling as though palsied.

Here she was entering into a place where there was nothing but the influence, and though the refinery rang with the howls and pleas and shrieks of broken animals above, no matter how hard she hit could it, again and again, Violet knew that it truly reigned supreme here.

Yet, from ahead, within veils of darkness so complete that it felt as though her eyes ceased function, she heard something crackling at the edges of an echo, and it sounded metallic and familiar enough that she felt true joy.

The machine. The beast was too far away to speak words, but it was sounding the machine in controlled bursts, the noise like a beacon guiding her in.

“I’m coming.” Violet said, and the words came as a whisper, for she was trembling too badly to speak. Stiff legged and wide eyed, she hurried forward.

Then her lantern went out with a final desultory ping.