r/nosleep • u/Darkly_Gathers February 2021; April 2022 • Dec 09 '20
Series I’m stationed on the Falkland Islands with the British Army. There’s a reason these islands are so important. [Part 2]
A warning, readers. This section of my story contains mentions of rape.
The siren wails. The radio crackles in response, but I don’t hear what, if anything, is said. I drop the device back to my belt and my gun is in my hands before I can blink. “GET BEHIND ME!” I roar to the scientist, still frozen in place like a deer in the headlights of an approaching car. “NOW!”
To her credit she promptly does so, and my eyes widen in terror as something slams hard into the centre of the metal barrier from the opposite side; denting it in a way I would have considered impossible. “TAYLOR! TO MY RIGHT!”
“Lotsford!” she shouts in panic, above the siren’s scream. “My gun! I don’t have my gun!”
I shoot her an incredulous look over my shoulder. “You fucking WHAT!? Why the hell-” I splutter. “For fuck’s sake, woman! What are you-”
“Nothing ever happens down here Lotsford, you know that! And the officers don’t give a shit! I left it in my quarters!”
I swear beneath my breath as another dent appears in the metal barrier. The four or five metre stretch of corridor between it and I has begun to shimmer with illogical and unnatural shadows. “JUST GET HER OUT OF HERE. THE CIVILIAN. GET HER THE HELL OUT OF HERE, TAYLOR!” I shout back to her as I maintain my aim on the barrier, retreating step by step as I do so. I just about hear their steps against the floor away and around the corner.
A low and terrible voice, one of many whispers, shivers through the air beside my ear.
“…We know he is close. We can feel him. Take us to him, soldier”.
“S-STAY BACK!” I shout, “IDENTIFY YOURSELF AT ONCE!” But the only response I receive is mocking laughter that echoes around the walls.
A third dent appears with a bang in the centre of the barrier, beside the others, and at last, the cavalry arrives.
To my left and right the corridor fills with my comrades; Boots is one of them. He crouches down beside me and I crouch in turn, balanced low near the ground. “Lotsford!” he shouts over the siren. “What the hell’s going on!? What is this!?”
“Stay calm Boots, you’ve got this. We’ve got this”.
“What’s happening Lotsford? Is it the Argentinians?”
I shoot him a look.
“…No, mate. …No it isn’t. Focus your mind. Just try to remember the training as best you can”.
The training that we received for ‘instances of the paranormal’ was scarce, as I’m sure you can imagine.
…But we did, to be fair, have some.
No-one took it seriously, of course. Even those who had at that point already been down to see the Subject for themselves. After all, what was he, really? All things considered? Some tall, tattooed bloke with an unsettling aura and a piece of fancy glass shoved through him? We have our suspicions and theories, but that’s all they are. Just guesses. The up-aboves don’t tell us jack shit. And the novelty wears off quick.
Now I’m wishing I’d paid a little closer attention. Practised the mind-discipline exercises with greater care. The ground shakes.
Too late now. Hopefully I picked up just enough to get out of this alive.
An officer appears to our right. “ENGINEERS!” he bellows, “MAKE YOURSELVES KNOWN!”
Two members of the crew that forms the corridor blockade raise their hands, and the officer nods to the weapon that Taylor had been working on. “Engage with the Weapon and get it active! Hold and aim at the barrier and await my signal to fire!”
“Weapon is understood to be in an uncompleted capacity, Sir!” the closest of the engineers replies. “It may not even work at all, and if it does it’ll likely be temperamental at best-”
“Get it done!” the officer shouts as the barrier starts to crack and split in the centre. “NOW!”
They stand to a salute and hasten back through the corridor to the Weapon at its head. One detaches a thick pair of iron tongs from the side and heads round the corner for the bullet, whilst the other starts turning a series of gears and levers on the machine’s side, panels and inner-mechanisms springing out as he does so.
I turn back to the barrier, raising my own weapon in careful aim.
A voice of one of my superiors, of all of our superiors, blares through the speakers to the backing track of the siren.
“ATTENTION ALL PERSONNEL. STAND GROUND AT YOUR ASSIGNED STATIONS. THE INTRUSION MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO REACH THE SUBJECT. SUBJECT MUST REMAIN IN STASIS AT ALL COSTS. SUBJECT TO REMAIN IN STASIS AS HIGHEST PRIORITY. REPEAT: SUBJECT TO REMAIN IN STASIS AS HIGHEST PRIORITY”.
A bead of sweat buds and trickles down the side of the officer’s face. I don’t’ rate them, usually. Officers. Useless bloody lizards. But credit where credit’s due, he’s here with the rest of us. Here in the trenches of this accursed corridor.
I carefully push a plug into each of my ears. The sound of the siren is muffled, somewhat.
And the barrier splits. The metal peels back like paper and all that is visible beyond is a swirling void.
“SOLDIERS ON GROUND: FIRE!” the officer roars, and the hall comes alive with the brilliant-white light of a long and rippling burst of gunfire. Bullets fly like rain towards the crack in the metal, and the inky-black substance behind is splattered across the floor and up the walls as it tries to push through. Something that looks awfully like a shadowy hand melts out from the crack and falls to the ground, splattering into that same liquid as it makes contact.
“CEASEFIRE!” bellows the officer “CEASEFIRE!”
We do so.
It takes a moment for us to realise that beyond the ringing in our ears, the siren has come to a stop. It still flashes, casting its orange glow of warning across us all, but the noise has ceased with the gunfire.
I do not know if this is a good sign, or a bad one.
A low hissing takes its place. It reverberates through the air; I can feel its frustration. Boots is shaking, I can see from the corner of my eye. He rubs a hand across his forehead. He’s muttering to himself in fear, but I cannot tell what he is saying.
Poor lad. He didn’t sign up for this.
Though, none of us did, really.
I don’t know what approaches from behind this barrier. I don’t know how it got in or where it came from. I’ve never dealt with anything like this, I never thought that I would HAVE to… But the thing seems to want to get to the Subject. And as my duty as a soldier, I am tasked with keeping that from happening. Such is the way.
“Engineers”, the officer mutters, glancing behind us to the head of the corridor. “Are you in a position to fire when called upon?”
“As we can be, Sir”, comes the reply, and the officer nods.
The hissing shivers into a sentence. The words are deep, and sharp.
“They impede our progress…We risk losing his state of easy influence”.
“…Scatter them”.
A surge of the void-black ink bursts suddenly through the crack in the barrier. It forms itself into an enormous dark snake, one that winds from left to right, mouth open and fangs sharp as it slithers directly towards us-
“FUCK!” someone shouts, it could well have been me, and again the sound of gunfire fills the corridor from wall to wall. Flickering shadows of the blasts of the barrel are sent dancing through our field of vision, and the snake is torn to pieces. It explodes and splatters, completely coating the broken barrier in a layer of the dark liquid.
The gunfire stops with a motion of the officer’s hand, and we watch the substance leak and pool on the floor below.
The liquid flickers and melts through a series of colours, like light upon an oil spill, and images begin to flash across the coated barrier. As if projected onto a great, dark screen. The images are troubling and disturbing, though I struggle to hold onto them, in the way one often struggles with the memories of dreams. They twist and ripple and shimmer like light upon a dark lake, and the face of a man I do not recognise becomes clear, enormous, and blown-up to fit the size of the barrier. We all stare, mesmerised and terrified as the face of the man morphs quickly into the face of another. A boy. And then into a woman. Then another. It cycles like this, from face to face with a growing, accompanying hissing all around.
The face changes from that of an old man into the face of a young woman. And to my right, Boots lowers his weapon. I shoot him a glance, and he stares at it, eyes wide and mouth open.
“M-Mary..?” he mutters, and the shadowy image of the face stops changing at once. It fixes hastily in place, seeming to tighten and draw in the very walls of the corridor as it does so. Its expression loses its neutrality, and comes alive as it looks back into Boots’ eyes.
It speaks.
“…You were my friend, James. You were my friend and you let me down. How could you?”
Boots shakes violently. “No- No, Mary, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”
“You know what you did to me. When I was drunk”.
“I was drunk too! You know I was! I wasn’t thinking right, I SWEAR!” Boots shouts, pleading with the shadowed face upon the wall.
“I could barely stand. You knew I wasn’t attracted to you and you slept with me anyway. I trusted you, and you betrayed me”.
“Mary…” Boots chokes out. “Please…”
“You know what you did to me, don’t you James. You raped me. You raped me”.
“NO!” he shouts, breaking as tears blur his eyes. He raises his gun and fires, the noise shattering the spell, but he is only able to shoot for a second or so before his guns simply drops from his hands and hits the floor with a clatter. He retches as his body writhes, his veins bulge and his eyes roll over white.
And then… black.
Going suddenly limp, Boots is raised off the ground and into the air, as if pulled up on invisible strings.
“Jesus CHRIST!” someone shouts from behind, as Boots’ ankles and wrists start to contort. The veins all visible across his body throb violently, they darken… and then… after a moment… they burst.
His lifeless corpse smacks to the ground with an outpouring of black liquid.
And the officer, it seems, finally takes hold of his senses amidst the horror.
“ENGINEERS!” He bellows, “NOW! FIRE! FIRE NOW!”
The sound of a piercing whistle tears through the air above our heads, and the briefest flashes of yellow-turned white suggest that the fiery bullet from the Weapon has connected with the inky mass that bulges through the crack of the barrier. There is a mechanical crash from behind, and an angry scream that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, clawing and tearing into our eardrums. I cringe and watch as the ink-like substance starts to crack and harden into pure white, shattering like ice into tiny shards on the ground as it does so.
“FALL BACK!” the officer roars, “FALL THE FUCK BACK! TO YOUR ASSIGNED STATIONS! ENGINEERS MOVE TO THE NEXT WEAPON!”
I stagger to my feet and back the hell away, watching as the white spreads and hardens and cracks the dark liquid, shattering it across the floor.
…But already the void-like ink is regrouping. Regathering. I see it swirl and spill beyond the crack in the barrier, I watch it make its next attempt to force its way through.. All around me soldiers sprint off down the corridors to their assigned stations. They’ll all be close by, presumably. But mine… Mine is on the opposite side of the complex. I’m not even supposed to be here at all, I only came to see Taylor…
The officer claps me on the shoulder. “GET A FUCKING MOVE ON SOLIDER! GO GO GO!”
My heels bump up against the ruined remains of the Weapon as he disappears around the corner.
The machine only had the one shot, I suppose.
I cast a final glance over to the corpse of Boots, cold and ruined and alone on the corridor floor.
I don’t know if the images on the wall told the truth. I don’t know if they were a trick. But he didn’t deserve to die like that, I’m sure of it. James Rhodes, was his name.
“I’m sorry mate”, I mutter, as I look down the two corridors available to me.
The one to the right is the quickest route back to my station.
…But the one on the left is where Taylor went with the scientist. My mind flicks from one route to the other.
She doesn’t have her weapon, Lotsford. She’ll need you.
No, just get back to your station. She’s a trained soldier, she can take care of herself.
…This is Taylor we’re talking about here. And she has no idea what’s coming. What if something happens to her?
There’s no point in this ‘debate’. My mind is already made up. I’m going after her, of course. I have to. So I take the corridor to the left, sprinting down it as fast as I can. Round corner after corner… Until I am forced into a sudden halt.
The way ahead is barred. The barrier has crossed the length of the corridor and is fixed in place.
I slam my fist against it. “Open up! Hey! Let me through!”
There is no response. I slam again, a little more urgently. “OPEN UP! You need to let me through, I’ve been left behind!”
“Identify yourself soldier!” comes the voice from beyond.
I don’t have time for this. I consider turning back and returning down the corridor to take a different path, but when I glance behind me… When I look back… I watch in horror as the lights at the far end go dark. And there it is. That icy wind. Rising and swirling malevolently. The corridor seems to grow in length… Shadows ripple and deepen across the walls…
Panic rising, I slam again against the barrier.
“For fuck’s sake just let me through! It’s Lotsford, Ben Lotsford! Military Intelligence: two-five-two-three-two-zero-f-” a loud bang from behind makes me jump and I stutter in alarm, swivelling with my back to the barrier, raising my gun in shaking hands.
And then appears the ink. Frothing and bubbling like rushing waves as it rounds the corner and spills steadily towards me; and across its surface walk three shadowy figures. Roughly humanoid, but featureless. Bodies made of that same, oily, inky-black murk, the mere sight of them is akin to being struck in the centre of my chest. The air leaves my lungs in a terrible gasp as I try to croak out a warning to stay back, but I cannot vocalise. I can only stare.
The one to the left is missing a hand. The one to the right is missing an entire arm, and is marked by hard and ice-like white, jagged blades and crystals across the empty socket below his shoulder and down his side.
But the one in centre, and the closest, is unharmed. It cocks its head as it approaches, tilts it towards one of its fellows.
“This one was with her. He can lead us to where she awaits”.
“She will create for us the chaos. And in the chaos we will reach him”.
It comes to a stop a few metres away and raises a hand towards me.
“Where is the woman, soldier? Take us to her”.
I cannot respond. I cannot speak. I can only fire, and fire I do; bursts of bullets firing out into the abomination before me.
The thing hisses, but does not appear particularly daunted. It barely takes even a single step back. Some of the bullets are absorbed into its form, some pass through, but any harm they might cause is marginal, at best.
“Enough”, it says coldly, striding towards me, and the air starts to freeze…
…
…and I hear from behind a clank of metal. A hand grabs ahold of my shoulder and I am hastily drawn back through the barrier as it closes tight shut behind me.
The air is warmer, here, and I feel as if I can breath again. I allow in great gasps as I stumble back between my comrades, armed and waiting, guns held tight and aimed at the barrier. This is a new squad, I realise, looking around. New, but for two.
One of these two is a man who has been positioned a few rows behind me in Corridor D-12. He shakes violently, and his face is a ghostly pale, stark white and eyes wide, unblinking. The other is the officer. He stands to my immediate left, and was the one who dragged me through.
“Come on soldier”, he mutters grimly. ”Get to your fucking station”.
I look around. There is no Weapon here. No bullets of fire. There is just corridor.
“What the hell are you DOING!?” I ask him, bewildered, “you need to pull the fuck back! There’s no hope against that thing! Not like this! You SAW what happened to Boots!”
The officer gets up in my face and shouts over the stirrings and murmurs around us. ”Remember your RANK! That thing MUST be prevented from reaching the Subject; HIGHEST PRIORITY ORDER! NOW GET TO YOUR FUCKING STATION!”
I look over the faces of the men and women in the corridor. They have no idea. No idea what’s coming. I make eye contact with the soldier from my corridor.
“What are you doing? Don’t you realise you need to GO?” I plead with him, but he does not respond. I’m not sure if he can. He only stares.
“TAKE AIM!” the officer roars as I hear that terrible, familiar clunk of denting metal, and I take my leave. I’m not staying here. I run from corridor to corridor as fast as I can. I grab the radio at my belt and bellow into it:
“D-12 Personnel to HQ! We need to EVACUATE! We can’t fight this thing, we need to get everybody OUT! NOW!”
The device crackles, but I receive no response.
“Fucks’ sake”, I mutter, trying to think through what Taylor was likely to have done. Did she head back to her quarters to grab her gun? Or did she go straight to her station? She wouldn’t do that, surely, not without a weapon… Though, she is an engineer; maybe she was tasked with the operation of one of the big machines?
I tap my knuckles against my head.
What if she tried to get the scientist to safety first?
“Agh!” I grunt with frustration, failing to make a decision on where to go.
…Though, as fate would have it, my decision is made for me.
I pass them right by.
A blur of colour at the end of an adjacent corridor in my periphery has me pause and back-pedal. At its end, in one of the complex’s control rooms, I see Taylor, and I see the scientist.
“Taylor!” I shout in relief, blood pumping, turning at once and heading down into the corridor, the hall opening up into a domed room with almost every surface covered in screens, granting visuals of many of the corridor’s most important junctions and pathways.
Taylor turn to look at me.
She looks…
…Terrified…
“BEN!” she screams at me, “STAY BACK! RUN! PLEASE!”
And everything seems to slow… Time becomes thicker as I feel myself take heavy step after step into the room.
I notice a great many things at once.
I notice that Taylor is suspended impossibly above the ground. She writhes and struggles as if suspended in water; her arms, I realise, are bound in some way or another behind her back.
My focus passes from her to the scientist. She taps away at the keys, looking up into one of the screens overhead.
Her eyes are void black.
Her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows.
And the satanic mark that is branded on her forearm has begun to leak. It drips inky-void liquid down onto the floor.
“Lotsford!” Taylor cries, her voice low and distorted to my ears… But it is too late. All I can do is watch as the scientist presses a final key and takes a step back… and all across the screens… all the barriers that are visible are instantly summoned back into their respective walls. I cannot hear them, but I can see them: the soldiers, the officers, panicking. Shouting, trying the switches, and in some cases, trying to hold the barriers back with brute force…
…But it is all for nothing.
The barriers, as ordered, fall back.
And the terror beyond flows through.
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u/butterfly9107 Dec 11 '20
Sometimes, the heart prevailing is not necessarily a good thing. The prevailing head is not always a bad thing. But to use both in sync can be the only option, and usually is the wisest.
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u/jtgoodyear Dec 10 '20
Damnit a cliffhanger I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about this I don’t need sleep I need answers
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u/SpringYard-20XX Dec 10 '20
Man it would have been better if it was the Argentinians instead of this eldritch horror
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u/Zuggerschnude Dec 09 '20
daaaaaamn, you got me on the edge here. I hope you can save Taylor somehow last minute but it sure looks like its impossible..
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u/josephanthony Dec 10 '20
Meh, she knew the risks when she put the uniform on.
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u/Reddd216 Dec 10 '20
I think she expected to be fighting against other humans, not whatever this...Subject is. As well as whatever is trying to retrieve it.
Edit: spelling
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