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jgmartin · 2 months

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THE ONE BENEATH

[Short Horror, Military, Sci-fi]

The military base doesn’t exist.

Not officially.

It’s a rusted out corpse of abandoned hardware, a veritable graveyard of fallen soldiers and crumbling structures. Hidden twelve miles deep in the jungles of South America, there’s no reason anybody should be here. None. So why did I find a woman half-dead on the ground?

It’s a question I want answered.

She’s sitting across from me. Her eyes are downcast, her blouse is torn and her copper cheeks are flecked with spots of red. I don’t know if the blood belongs to her or somebody else, but I figure by the end of this, I’ll have a pretty good idea.

“Tourist?” I ask.

She gives me a hard stare. It’s quiet. Unyielding. She’s not certain who I am, and judging by the look in her eyes, she’s running a series of probabilities. It’s the black suit that does it. Always. People see the suit, they see the briefcase, and their imagination spins into overdrive.

I try another question. “Did you come alone?”

She shakes her head. Her mouth is a thin line, defiant and uneasy. The legs of her chair squeal as she rocks back and forth, giving motion to her anxiety. She’s considering the possibility that this is her last day on earth. Her last hour.

If I’m being honest, it might be.

“How many were with you?”

“Lots,” she says quickly. “They're still around. They know where I am, know where we are right now and–”

“I doubt that.”

Her voice stumbles.

“If anybody was with you, then chances are they’re already dead. Jobs like this? They’re usually bloodbaths. Massacres. They’re not the sort of places you expect to find survivors, much less unarmed ones.”

She swallows. “Who are you?”

“A friend.”

“Some friend. I don’t know the first thing about you.”

“Funny. I was about to say the same thing.” I reach into my briefcase and pull out my clipboard, centering it on my lap. On it are questions. They’re the sort of questions whose answers are typically written in blood. “How about you and I get to know each other?”

“If you think I’m gonna just tell who I am–”

“I don’t care who you are. I care about what you're doing here, miles deep in the jungle, sitting in a military base that doesn’t exist.” I press my pen to the clipboard. “How about you fill me in?”

The woman’s eyes narrow. Her slender hands ball into tight fists. If I had to guess, she’s not used to feeling this vulnerable, this powerless. “And if I leave?” she says, standing up. “What then? Are you going to cuff me to a pipe?”

I smile. “Why bother?”

The corner of her mouth twitches.

“You’re not going to leave,” I tell her. “You wouldn’t dare.”

For a moment, my eyes dance with hers, and in their fire I see something– some buried ember of fear. It’s unmistakable. “You know better than I do what’s out there,” I say. “So go ahead. Walk out that door if you think you’re safer outside. I won’t stop you.”

I wait for her to move, but she hesitates. They always hesitate.

“Maybe you’re right," I say. "Maybe I’m not a friend, but I’m the closest thing you’ll find to one for miles, so if I were you, I’d quit worrying about me. I’d start worrying about what it is I’m doing here.”

“Meaning?”

I wave my hand toward the broken window. Outside are rusted humvees. A crumbling barracks. Outside is a road so overgrown that tiny trees are sprouting from cracks in the concrete, while clutches of moss do their best to hide old rifle rounds. “Places like this aren't left to rot without a good reason. Soldiers are trained to fight. They aren't trained to flee into the jungle, leaving their equipment and assets behind." I gesture broadly. "Look around. This base was evacuated in a hurry, and that begs the question– why? More importantly, why did I find you in the middle of it?”

Her eyes dart outside. Her pupils are dilated in a cocktail of adrenaline and anxiety. “If I tell you… then you’ve gotta tell me something first.”

“Tell you what?”

“Who you are,” she says, voice trembling. “I want to know what’s really going on here. The truth. I’ve been lied to enough today.”

Have you? I study her. The truth of my work isn’t something people want to hear about– not really. They might think they do. They might think they’re ready to open Pandora's Box, to see the dark underbelly of reality, but it’s rarely the case.

Still, the woman strikes me as stubborn. If pulling back the veil can get her talking, then maybe it’s worth the existential crisis. I slip a hand inside my jacket, pull out my badge and toss it to her. She catches it, just barely. “There you go,” I say. “Everything you need to know about me, right down to my height and birthday."

She appraises the badge. Her eyes move across the laminate once, twice, then snap back up to me, suspicious. “This says you work for an organization called The Facility. I’ve never heard of it.”

“That’s the idea. We’re a shadow contractor. The less people know about us, the easier it is to do our job.”

“And what is that job?”

“Anomalies,” I tell her. “We investigate Events of supernatural origin. They’re typically caused by entities– things you’d recognize as monsters, or urban legends. My job is to hunt those things. Capture them.”

She shakes her head. "Why?”

“That’s a complicated question. The short answer is that it’s necessary. The long answer is that you’ll sleep better not knowing." I lean forward, flaring my jacket behind me, letting the woman get a glimpse of the pistol on my hip. "Fact is, I came here tonight to investigate an Event, but instead I found you. I’d like to know why that is.”

Her eyes drift to the window. She’s wearing the expression of a woman who was praying her nightmare was all in her head, that whatever she saw today was the product of acute psychosis, a little bit of neurological sabotage and nothing else. Now she’s considering that maybe there’s something more here. Maybe she’s not as crazy as she hoped she was.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

She bites her lip. Her voice is quiet, almost a whisper. “Maria.”

“You look like you’re having a hard time processing things, Maria.”

“You don’t know what I saw…” she mutters. “You have no idea…”

“I hear that a lot.” I pull out a pack of smokes, slip one between my lips. I light it and the nicotine tastes sweeter than heroin. It ripples through my body like emotional morphine, and just like that, the next part gets a little easier. “Between you and me, my father was killed by an entity, Maria. I watched him die.”

Her eyes meet mine. They’re wide. This wasn’t the emotional curveball she was expecting, and that’s exactly what makes it effective. Always.

“Happened when I was seven," I tell her. "I saw the whole thing from under my bed, cowering. A creature had him in its grip. Some tall man with two faces. He lifted him up to the ceiling and turned to me, asked what my favorite nightmare was, and then he tore my father in two. Like paper mache.”

I blow out a plume of smoke and it hangs in the air between us. Then I take another long drag. The truth is, I hate this story. I hate it more than anything else in the entire world. It’s a memory I’ve gone my entire life trying to forget, but in moments like these, it’s the most valuable piece of history I own. Even now, it’s working its black magic. I watch Maria’s posture shift. Her shoulders fall, slumping forward in horrified disbelief. She’s doing the human thing and empathizing with me, sharing a piece of my pain, and that’s exactly what I need her to do.

“Is that how this so-called Facility found you?” she asks.

“It is.”

Her eyes are staring a hole into the concrete floor. She looks distant. Haunted. “I’m so sorry,” she says.

I ash my cigarette. “Don’t be. It’s ancient history. The point I’m trying to make is that when you’ve seen an entity kill somebody, it stays with you. You recognize the scars. And right now, I see those scars all over your face.”

She doesn’t speak. She looks out the window, out across the military ruins to a rusty steel wheel rising from the dirt. It's bolted to a hatch that leads underground. One she’s been stealing glances at for the better part of our conversation.

“That bunker,” I say. “I found you lying beside it, bleeding and barely conscious. Something happened down there, didn’t it?”

A moment passes. Her eyes are narrowed in focus, like she’s weighing her options. Calculating outcomes. Eventually, she takes a breath. Asks a question. “You said that you hunted entities… Well, what about demons?”

“What about them?”

“Do they exist?”

I crack a grin. “Depends who you ask. Are you saying that you saw one down there?”

“I’m not sure,” she says at length. “Maybe not a demon but… something like it.” She stops. Her teeth dig into her lip, and then she says something that shocks even me. “I think I saw the devil. Satan.”

“Satan?” I say, whistling. “Now that’d be something.”

“You think I’m nuts,” she mutters, shaking her head. “I knew you would… Everyone will…”

“I don’t think you’re nuts. Not yet." I take one last drag on my cigarette, burn it to the filter and flick it to the floor. "The truth is, The Facility’s been tracking strange activity in the area. A lot of it. Entities are being drawn to this base, being pulled in from nearby regions like moths to a flame, only to vanish without a trace. I'm talking about heavy hitters. Nightmare fuel. These aren’t the sort of entities that we can destroy, much less contain, so the fact that they’re dropping off the face of the Earth is starting to get concerning.” I thumb to the broken window. “This base? It’s the Bermuda Triangle for boogeymen. I’m here to find out why.”

She shrinks in her seat. “Jesus… Do you think it has something to do with what I saw?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I won’t know until I get more details, and that means I need to know what you’re doing here.”

“Here?” she says, glancing at the bunker. “Get me out of here, and I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

"Not possible. We do this before nightfall. There’s no other way.”

What Maria doesn’t realize is that this entity likely already has her scent. Sooner or later, it’s going to return for her. When that happens, I need every advantage I can get– and that means understanding just what happened here.”

“Hang on,” she sputters. “What happens at nightfall?”

“Keep derailing my investigation, and you’ll find out.” I scratch her name onto the clipboard. “Now start talking. We’re losing daylight.”

She runs a frantic hand through her hair. “Christ. Alright,” she says, voice cracking. “Let me think for a second. It started a couple weeks ago, I think. A reader sent in a tip about this place–”

“Slow down. A reader?”

“Right, fuck. I'm a journalist. I work for an online paper, and we solicit tips for our stories. Usually scandals. Corruption. It's mostly political stuff… but a couple weeks back, a man sent in something bizarre.”

“That man have a name?”

“John.”

“Just John?”

Her voice breaks. “Yes.”

I write it down.

She continues. “John said he'd been hearing screaming, that his whole village had, coming from somewhere in the jungle nearby. Military was in the area. They were sending convoys through the village in the dead of night, with their headlights off to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Apparently they were all driving up an old road, one that hadn't been used in decades. John knew the road. He knew it led to an old military base… one that used to conduct illegal experiments."

I lean back. "What kind of experiments?"

"The human kind. Genetic stuff. DNA splicing, mutating– you name it."

“Seems weird John would know that.”

“He used to work there,” she explains. “A long time ago, during the Cold War.”

I frown. “The nearest village is twelve miles away. Nobody is hearing screaming at that distance."

“That’s just it. They didn’t hear screaming from the base, they heard it from the jungle. John said it sounded just like it used to when he worked there. Guttural. Animalistic. He could tell that the people screaming had been experimented on, and that they were being let loose in the jungle."

"Let loose?"

"Yeah. I guess they'd send out test subjects, then release other experiments, more advanced ones, to hunt them down.

"What for? To test their capabilities?"

“Partly,” she says darkly. “But mostly for food.”

I chew on the tip of my pen. "Cannibal humans, genetic testing, a massive military cover up– sounds like Pulitzer Prize material."

She folds her arms, gives me a scathing look. “Is that sarcasm?”

“Not at all. Give me John’s age.”

“Not sure,” she says. “Seventy, maybe? He was in good shape. Fit. But he looked rough.”

“Rough?”

“I just mean he looked like he’d been through the ringer. Had a hard life. His skin was leather, and he was missing half of his teeth. His hair was a tangled mess. I’m pretty sure I saw lice moving in his beard.” She pauses. “And his eyes…. His eyes were unnerving.”

“Describe them.”

“Well, they were pale– paler than the moon. And every so often they’d sort of pulse, almost bulge out of their sockets. I hate to say it, but he looked freaky.”

“And John brought you here, to this base?”

She nods.

“And where’s John now?”

“He’s…” Maria’s eyes drift to the bunker. “He’s dead. Down there.”

Could’ve guessed. I follow her gaze and the steel hatch is turning crimson in the setting sun. My stomach twists. What I don’t tell Maria is that entities are most active after nightfall. If I don’t solve this mystery soon, then the answer is likely going to come find us– and I’m not sure I like our chances of survival.

“That hatch,” I say. “I'm guessing that's how you and John entered the bunker.”

“Yes.”

“Describe the interior.”

Maria takes a second. She furrows her eyebrows, as though thinking back. “It was narrow,” she says slowly. “Like a tall cylinder. I remember standing at the top of the hatch and looking down into a dark pit that stretched forever. John got on the ladder and told me to follow. He said it’d be a bit of a descent, but once we were down there, he was certain we’d find the evidence we’d need to blow the conspiracy wide open.”

“What state was the bunker in?” I ask. “John implied operations had resumed, but did it appear that way?”

“No…” she says. “Frankly, the condition was awful. It looked like the bunker had been abandoned since the Cold War. Moss crept up the walls and the ladder rattled with every step we took. The place was a deathtrap. Every time I put my foot down, I half-expected the ladder to snap.”

Odd. One would think John would clue in after seeing the state of the bunker that it wasn’t fit for operation. Then again, John strikes me as a man not altogether there. He might have been mentally ill. Out of his mind. Based on Maria’s description of him– the pale eyes, chilling demeanor– I can’t help but wonder if John wasn’t so much an employee of the program as he was a test subject.

Maria continues. “About fifty feet down the ladder, we started to see catwalks. Dozens of them. They extended off the ladder in every direction, leading to various entrances along the interior.” She trails off, as if collecting her thoughts. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse. Quiet. “The entrances were welded shut. All of them. It’s like they were trying to keep something trapped inside… like they didn’t want it getting out.”

“All of the entrances?” I ask.

“No,” she says, tugging nervously at her sleeve. “Not all of them. One was different. We found it at the bottom of the ladder, half-submerged in rainwater. The flooding only came up to our knees, so we were able to wade through easily enough but…” Her fingers dance across her jeans. They pick at the fabric.

“But what?”

“It was torn open,” she breathes. “The entrance, I mean. It was warped outward like something had clawed its way out of the bunker, pulled it apart like a tin can. I’m talking about inches of steel here. Enough to shrug off the shockwave of a nuclear warhead– I mean fuck, what could do that?”

For the first time, I feel the ghost of fear creep through me. It’s subtle. Insidious. If what she’s describing is true, then there are two, maybe three entities I’m aware of with that capability. All three are impossibly violent. Vicious. Official policy to avoid contact at all costs. If such avoidance isn’t possible, then policy dictates the elimination of all witnesses to ensure the preservation of social order.

I look to Maria. She’s covered in bruises, blood and judging by the way she’s cradling her arm, probably has at least one fracture. She’s already suffered a nightmare. I wonder if I’ll have the courage to put her down if the time comes.

“The door,” I say, hoping she doesn’t hear my voice crack. “John used to work there. He must have had thoughts on the damage.”

She snorts. “He said it was explosive charges. He said the military probably breached the door to get inside when they restarted their science project, but I knew that couldn’t be true. First of all, the door was warped outward– not inward. More than that, there wasn’t a shred of explosive damage in the area.”

“I’m assuming these were observations you shared.”

“Of course. John didn’t care though, just changed the subject– asked me if I had any skeletons in my closet. Asked me if I’d ever hurt people, or considered it and–”

“What?”

“Yeah, I know,” she says, laughing in disbelief. “Talk about a left turn into what the fuck. I shrugged it off. I mean, I knew John had demons in his past– maybe he was looking for a little absolution from me. It’s not like he sounded threatening. He almost asked the questions casually, like he was hoping we could start a conversation, forgive each other for our sins, sorta thing. He didn’t press the subject. Maybe if he had, though, things would’ve been different.”

She sighs. Her eyes shift to the bunker, hazy with memories. “He helped me squeeze through the damaged doorway, and we continued on. All the passages were flooded down there, utterly dark. We sloshed through countless corridors, our headlamps reflecting off the black water and making shadows against the walls. It creeped me out. It felt like we weren’t alone down there because I’d keep seeing movement out of the corner of my eye.”

Movement. I wonder if she really was just seeing things, or if there had been something down there, stalking them even then. “Anything stand out as interesting in those corridors?”

“In some sense, all of it was interesting,” she says. “The whole place was like a buried time capsule. In the rooms we passed I saw ancient magazines and peeling posters. I saw little relics from the 70s or earlier, some floating in the water, others sitting on dusty tables and countertops– even keepsakes, like lockets, wedding rings. Even the desks were full of soggy documents. Classified ones. Seemed strange they’d just leave all that behind.”

She takes a deep breath. “We passed through a series of maze-like corridors, then climbed a ladder that finally got us out of that floodwater. It felt nice to be on dry ground again, but the new chamber…” A shiver runs through her. “It was narrow to the point of being claustrophobic, and all along its walls were streaks of dark paint. The air felt musty. Rancid. But it wasn’t until we turned the corner that–” She stops suddenly, her expression paling.

“Maria,” I press. “What happened when you turned the corner?”

A moment passes. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse. “Something crunched under my foot,” she says. “Bones. The passage was full of them. Skeletons were piled a foot high. It looked… It looked like they’d died scrambling over each other, like they were trying to reach the ladder and escape something. That’s when I realized the streaks along the walls weren’t paint. They were blood. Old and brown.”

My heart thrums. Could this be evidence of John’s so-called experiments? “Did the bones appear to be mutated at all?”

Maria nods, slowly. “Yes. Some more than others. One skull could’ve belonged to a man, but its jaw was elongated, like a horse’s. A single, twisted horn curved out of its forehead. Another was… another was flat. Square. It looked like somebody had rolled a person’s head under a tractor, but it had dozens of eye sockets. Multiple mouths.”

She brings a hand to her mouth. Gags. She looks like she might be sick, and I can’t blame her. I’m beginning to feel a little light-headed myself, though for another reason. Outside, we’re losing light. Night is fast approaching, and I’m worried it might be bringing something that I’m not yet ready to deal with. Something violent. Deadly.

“What was John’s reaction to the bones?” I ask, swallowing my dread.

“His reaction?” she mutters. “Jesus… Well, he picked one up– another skull. This one looked like it could’ve belonged to a woman, maybe, but where the mouth should have been was something else entirely. Mandibles. Like a wasp, or an ant. Whatever it was, it got John excited. His eyes did that creepy thing where they bulged from his sockets, and down there in the dark, I swear they even glowed. He held the skull up, just inches from my face and asked me how it made me feel. I could hardly focus on his words. His breath smelled like rot. Decay. He pressed me against the wall, but I shoved him off. He came back at me, and I took a swing at him– caught him across the jaw because I wasn't taking any chances down there. That dazed him. He stumbled, spat out some blood.”

An altercation. A new, unexpected wrinkle to her story that isn’t giving me any solutions to save our lives. Still, John is a curious individual. He was right about the experiments. If he’s dead, then I wonder what role he played in all of this… “How did John react to you hitting him?”

“He got weird,” she says, shaking her head. “Like fucking bizarre. He started mumbling nonsense, then shouting that I was being cruel, evil, like those monsters all over the ground. He cried. He whimpered that he was hurt, and that he brought me here as a favor, but now I was betraying him.” Maria pauses, as if she’s trying to make sense of her own story. “It was so strange. The way he was shouting didn’t sound angry, but almost performative. He kept calling me a monster like he was trying to get somebody’s attention.”

“And did he?”

Her mouth falls open as if to say no before a sudden realization flickers across her eyes. “Yes…” she breathes. “Oh God, I didn’t notice at the time but yes. Right after the shouting, we heard a clanging sound. It echoed through the passage. Whatever it was, it sounded distant. Far off, like it was coming from the entrance to the bunker, from that long ladder.”

“How did you react?”

“I didn’t know what to do. I mean, hell, I don’t think I believed it was really happening. We were miles deep in a jungle in a military base that by all accounts didn’t exist. Who the hell could be coming down the ladder?”

“And John’s reaction?”

“He grabbed my hand. Swore. He said the military must’ve figured out we were there, that they were coming to capture us, or kill us, or turn us into one of their newest abominations– who the fuck knows. He told me he knew a place where we could hide. We fled down passages that twisted and turned like a labyrinth. I followed his lead. At that point I had no idea where we were, no idea how to find my way back. He was my lifeline. My only shot. But the entire time we ran… I heard something rumbling in the dark.”

“Something human?”

“Do humans howl?”

Goosebumps trace my skin. No. They certainly don’t. “Maria,” I say, “this is important. What did the howl sound like– a wolf, or maybe a hyena?” This could be my chance to identify this thing. To figure out what it is we’re up against, and save our lives.

But she shakes her head. She shakes her head and I hate her for it. “No,” she tells me.

“It didn’t sound like anything alive. It sounded artificial, electronic. It howled like a microphone screams with feedback, all high-pitched and ear-splitting.”

My grip tightens, cracking the plastic shell of my pen. Maria’s description doesn’t sound like any entity I’m familiar with, and that’s making me frustrated and terrified. “This place John mentioned,” I say, swallowing. “The place he said you’d be safe– where was that?”

The color in her face washes away. “A wide room, shaped like a pentagon. All along the wall were slots. Gun turrets. They were abandoned, rusted out like everything else there but it was the words written all across the walls that made my blood go cold…” Her voice trails off. She tries to finish her thought, but it comes out as a sob. She drops her face into her hands and the tears come out like a torrent, messy and loud. I give her a moment to let it out, to collect herself, but the truth is I’m not sure it’s a moment we can afford.

Outside, the sun is missing. It’s gone. The last scraps of daylight are making crooked shadows out of the treeline, spilling them across the base like decrepit fingers, reaching toward us like hungry phantoms.

My eyes find my clipboard. I scan it. I review the details I’ve recorded in search of some clue, some revelation that might get us out of this alive, but my writing is a mess. It’s uneven. It occurs to me that my hand has been shaking, that even now my palm is slick with sweat.

“I’m sorry,” Maria sniffles, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay.”

It isn’t.

“You said there were words on the wall. What did they say?”

“Sector 5…” she says, taking a shuddering breath. “Sector 5: Feeding Trough. And the room… Oh god, there were corpses everywhere. They were scorched. Burned. They were half-devoured, rotting away, with maggots pouring out of their skin. The scent was… Nothing in the world smelled more terrible, more revolting.”

“Corpses,” I say, heart pounding. “Like the ones you saw before? Genetic experiments?”

“You said something earlier. Something about missing monsters… Disappearing entities…”

I lean forward. "What about it?"

Her eyes get wide. The contours of her face twist with the onset of dawning horror. “I think I found them,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “I think I found all of them down there.”

My jaw clenches. It’s my turn to go pale with shock. Suddenly, the puzzle pieces begin to connect in my mind. They’re building a picture that I’m not sure I want to see, but it’s a picture that’s becoming difficult to deny. “Why?” I press. “What makes you so sure they weren’t just test subjects like the others?”

“These felt different,” Maria says quickly. “Horrible in a way that even the others couldn’t compare to. It’s like when you look at a manikin, or a doll… What’s the phrase?”

“Uncanny valley,” I offer.

“That’s it,” she says. “That’s what I felt looking at these things, the uncanny valley. It was like they didn’t have a soul– like they never had a soul. Some looked human. Nearly. But they were too tall, or their limbs were too long, or they had too many teeth in all the wrong places. But what scared me most of all wasn’t the bodies, it was the thought that something had killed those things. Something had torn literal nightmares to pieces, and there was a good chance it was coming to do the same thing to me and John.

“John,” I say, still trying to parse his significance in her ordeal. “That many bodies couldn’t have appeared overnight. They’d been there for a long time. That means he probably knew about them, didn’t he?”

She nods, gasping. “He knew. He fucking knew. He shoved me onto that pile of corpses, that festering and decaying pit of monsters and told me as much. He started shouting. Call me a monster all over again. Evil, he said. Twisted. He kept pointing at me like all of this was my fault, and he hadn’t both led us to our deaths.”

Her voice becomes a stuttering mess. “A-all the while I heard that thing in the dark. Approaching. I felt terrified, hopeless and numb. I kept asking John why me? Why go through all this trouble just to kill me? And he told me that he didn’t have a choice. He knelt next to me, put a hand on my cheek and whispered that his child needed to feed. It was getting hungry. Desperate. He almost looked fucking r-remorseful if you can believe it, and he told me that he was really sorry, and that he hated to do this but… He stepped away from me. Stood against the wall of the chamber. Watched. Waited.”

For a second, I’m afraid Maria is going to break into fresh sobs, but she pushes through.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she continues, wiping tears from her cheeks. “I didn’t have anywhere to run, anywhere to hide, so I just lay there in that heap of monsters. I gave up. The whole time, those footsteps got closer and closer. The nearer they came, the slower they got. It was like it knew I was trapped. Like it’d done this before, and knew there wasn’t a rush…” She looks up at me. “Do you think… John did that to other people too?”

“It’s certainly possible. Did you get a good look at the creature?”

She shudders. “Yes. I had my headlamp trained on the passage the whole time, and when it appeared around the corner, I almost missed it. I heard it, but I could barely see it. It was a tall, flickering shadow. It pulsed. Vibrated. The way it moved was jerky, haphazard, almost like it had one foot in our reality, like it was glitching with every step it took.”

“Glitching…” I mutter. Why does that sound familiar?

“That’s right,” she says. “And that wasn’t even the strangest thing about it.” She gets small in her chair. “It had these eyes. Amber ones. Bright and gleaming, like twin cinders smoldering in empty space. It felt like they were piercing me, like its eyes were digging through my skin and looking into my mind. Or my soul. It was like that thing was taking bites out of my memories, tasting them before spitting back out…”

“How did it feel? Painful?”

“No, she says. “It felt cold. Like a blizzard in my head, like all my thoughts had frozen to a crawl. Maybe that’s why I calmed down. I don’t know… I remember sitting there, totally numb as the Shadow phased through the metal bars of the gate. It almost looked human. It had two arms, two legs and a head, but its body was made of black static. Like television interference.”

Television interference… Where have I heard that description before? I rack my mind for a match, some kind of urban legend or ancient lore that matches what she’s saying, but nothing jumps out. I flip through the pages of my clipboard, stopping on one labeled ABERRATE EVENTS. It’s The Facility’s own Most Wanted List. My eyes fly through the cases listed, but there isn’t anything close to what she’s describing.

An idea strikes me.

“Did the Shadow hurt you at all?”

She looks down at her arm. There’s a large gash there, framed by clots of dried blood. “No… I don’t think so,” she says hesitantly. “I got these injuries when I was trying to escape.”

No, of course it didn’t. It had other food available already. “And what happened after it pierced you with its eyes?” I ask.

“It walked past me,” she says. “It walked through that mulch of corpses and headed straight for John. It started speaking along the way. At least, I think it did.”

“What do you mean by speaking?”

“Do you remember how I said it was howling before?”

“I do.”

“Well, this time it was hissing– like a livewire, or static electricity. Whatever it was communicating, John looked panicked. He was crying. Pleading with it. He kept saying that he’d done his best, but there was nothing else out there, so the Shadow would have to make due with me. But the Shadow didn’t seem to care. It grabbed John by his long hair, lifted him up to the ceiling and its cinderlight eyes started gleaming an angry orange.”

My heartbeat races. My pen flies across the clipboard, desperately trying to avoid missing a single detail.

Maria keeps talking. She keeps giving me more of what I need. “John kicked and screamed,” she says. “He begged me to help him, told me that if I didn’t I was every bit the monster he’d said I was and I’d be next… But before he could finish, the Shadow’s eyes flashed and leaked fire. John started shrieking, moaning as his face melted into his skull.”

Maria’s face twists with revulsion. Disgust. She looks away, back to the bunker. I wonder if she’s hearing what I am– that dim rumble of something moving underground, that slow march of an approaching nightmare. Our clock is ticking. It’s not something I can tell her though, because as soon as she starts panicking, I lose the chance to connect the dots I need.

“Maria,” I say, pulling her attention back. “Continue. It’s critical I get these details.”

“Sorry… It’s not a memory I like thinking of but… The Shadow held John there, his legs twitching weakly, and then it grabbed his head and tore it off his neck.” She brings a hand to her mouth, starts nervously biting her nails. “Then it lifted John’s skull to its amber eyes. It opened its mouth and screamed fire. The heat I felt was like an open furnace, like Hell itself. Tendrils of darkness emerged from the Shadow, clutching at John’s scorched skull and cracking it open like an egg. His brain spilled out. The Shadow caught it in those tendrils, and brought it into itself. His brain. Like it was fucking assimilating it… Or eating it. ” She looks up at me, and there’s the same angry defiance I saw when we met. “Now do you get it?” she asks. “Now do you see what I mean about this thing being the devil? What else could do something like that?”

A good question. I can think of one entity. Only one. If my guess is correct, then Maria and I get to live to see tomorrow’s sunrise. If it’s wrong, then I need to put a bullet in both our heads before that thing finds us.

All of it hinges on my next question.

“It killed John, then what? What did the Shadow do?”

“It turned back to me,” she says. “It glared at me with those blazing eyes, and I thought I was next. I knew I was. But then I felt another blizzard sweep across my mind, and that was it– I blacked out.”

“Hang on…” I mutter. “What do you mean you blacked out? I found you lying outside of the bunker. How did you escape?”

She shakes her head, frantic. “I don’t have a clue. I blacked out, then the next thing I remember was waking up outside the bunker, with you pouring water on my face and telling me we needed to talk. That’s it.”

She shoots up from her chair. “Christ! We need to leave.”

I blink. “Why?”

“The police. I’ve gotta tell them about John and what he was doing. I’ve gotta tell them about this base. Maybe John brought others here. More victims. Maybe some of them are still alive down there and need help. We need search parties and–”

“Don’t bother,” I say.

She looks at me, stunned.

“The police won’t have any record of John. Tell them where you were, what you saw in that bunker, and they’ll probably kill you.” I reach into my pocket, pull out my lighter and run a thumb down the sparkwheel. It flickers to life. “Fact is, John doesn’t exist. Neither does this base.”

I bring the lighter to the edge of my clipboard. The flame catches a page.

“What the hell are you doing?” Maria exclaims.

“Saving your life,” I say, tossing the clipboard to the floor. It pops and cracks as the fire eats the woman’s story, one word at a time.

“What the fuck? You said you believed me!”

“I still do,” I tell her. “That’s the problem. An hour ago, I had no idea what was going on here, but the more you spoke, the more it started making sense. I realized that you and John were more right than wrong. That there really is a conspiracy here. A cover-up.”

“Then the people deserve to know!”

“They do,” I confess. “And they will, eventually– but not from you, and not from my report. Neither is an option.”

She shakes her head, incredulous. “Then how?”

I walk to the window, rest my hands against the edge. I take a breath. It’s humid, heavy with South American heat. “I’ll figure something out. I always do.”

There’s a heartbeat of silence. Then, she asks the obvious question. “It’s your employer, isn’t it? This whole thing has something to do with The Facility.”

“Yes,” I tell her. “I think it does.”

She appears at my side. The two of us stare out across the dark of the base, out at the steel hatch rising from the dirt, where a devil made flesh is inching ever closer. “I thought you said your job was hunting monsters,” she says at length, “not creating them.”

“My job is a lot of things. More than anything else, it’s complicated. The Facility is… Well, it’s not what I’d call a good organization. Or even a moral one.”

“Then what is it?”

I consider the question. “A pragmatic answer to an otherwise ugly question.”

She looks at me expectantly.

“The question of salvation,” I explain. “The question of how do you rescue humanity from a nightmare so twisted that it defies all language? All concept of imagination? There’s something coming for us, Maria, something dark and unfathomable, and these entities– these monsters might be our only chance at fighting back.”

She’s quiet. Her expression is difficult to read.

“Decades ago, The Facility was a very different organization,” I tell her. “In those days, they thought the approaching nightmare was right around the corner, that we had weeks or months until it showed up on our doorstep. They didn’t know. Out of fear, they greenlit any and every possible solution. Or at least, that’s what the rumors say.”

“Rumors?”

I nod, darkly. “There’s no real records of The Facility’s activities during the Cold War. Most documents were destroyed. The few that remain are heavily redacted. I wasn’t around then, obviously, but I picked up bits and pieces from old timers I’ve worked with. They mentioned black projects. Hidden programs. One project was particularly infamous, so much so that even now, half a century later, The Facility hasn’t entirely snuffed out its legend.”

“What project?”

“Project Judas,” I say. “If you believe the rumors, it was headed by a brilliant biochemist named Screech. Jonathan Screech. The aim of the program was to create the ultimate weapon, a monster that could assimilate targets into its being, absorbing their capabilities. Such a function would provide it with a near limitless power ceiling. The problem was–”

Something hits my ears. Maria’s hand finds my arm, squeezing it painfully.

“Do you hear that?” she hisses.

Steel rattles in the distance. There’s a low groan of warping metal, like the rungs of a ladder slumping beneath the weight of something titanic. There’s something beneath us. It’s inside of that bunker, climbing that old ladder, and it’s making its way to the surface.

“We’ve gotta run!” Maria tugs at my arm, but I keep my feet planted where they are. My eyes narrow. I stare at the now trembling steel wheel, lit up beneath the light of the jungle moon.

Maria stumbles backward. A smile finds its way onto my face. In the distance, across the ruins of the base, the bunker’s hatch is thrown open. A dark shape emerges. It buzzes like television static, framed in shafts of moonlight. Its twin eyes glow like cinders. The shadow lurches, looking around, scanning the base and emitting a low electric hum.

“That’s it…” Maria whimpers. “Oh God… that’s it…”

The creature sees us. It sees me. It takes a shambling step forward, and dust and dirt flies into the air beneath its weight. Its eyes smolder, growing and growing until they become a blaze of fire. Maria is on the ground. She’s hiding beneath the window sill, reefing on the fabric of my pants and pleading with me to run, but I hardly notice she’s there.

This shadow– this monster, is why I’ve come here tonight.

Now, we finish things.

A wave of arctic air passes through my mind. It’s just as she described. My heart slams as I feel this Shadow rifle through my thoughts, chewing on my memories. I close my eyes. I breathe deep, inviting it in. Go ahead. Have your fill.

And then with one final shiver, the cold in my skull fades. That Shadow retreats, pulls back from my mind and when I open my eyes, I see it gazing back at me. The fire in its eyes dims to that cinderglow. It tilts its head skyward. Six black wings burst from its back in a shower of static.

“What’s happening?” Maria asks frantically, still on the ground beneath the window. “How are you going to kill it?”

“I’m not,” I tell her.

The Shadow belts out one last distorted howl before launching itself into the air like a streak of night. Three flaps of its wings, and it’s gone. Vanished into the sky, lost amongst the clouds.

Maria rises to her feet. Her eyes are wide. She’s shaking, her entire body is shaking with a tidal wave of horror. “Oh no…” she mutters, gazing at the sky. “It’s gone… So many are going to die…”

“Yes,” I tell her. “I hope so.”

She turns to me then, angry. Stunned. “You told me your job was stopping those things! Hunting them! What’s the deal, asshole? Why’d you just let it fly off?”

“Because I never finished my story.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me…”

“Project Judas had a directive,” I explain. “A very specific one. Its purpose was to assimilate hostile entities, to annihilate monsters and boogeymen, and ensure the survival of our species. Simply put, it was never made to hurt humans. After everything you’ve told me, I’m not convinced it can.”

She crosses her arms, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Were you even listening to what I said? I found a fucking graveyard down there. It burned John’s skull to a crisp, cracked it open, and ate his brains. I don’t care what it was designed for– I watched it kill a human right in front of me.”

“I’m not certain you did.” I lift up my briefcase, paying my now ashen clipboard one final, farewell glance. “From everything you described, I question whether John was a man at all by the time he took you down to that bunker. If he really was Johnathan Screech, and I think the evidence points to yes, then it’s said he conducted more than a few experiments on himself along the way. The glowing eyes? I’ve never met a human with a set of those.”

“But–”

“Fact is, John brought you here to kill you. John told you that he needed to feed you to his child, that he didn’t have a choice…” My thoughts turn to all the strange disappearances that lead me here. The missing entities. The absentee urban legends. “He was feeding Judas a steady supply of horrors, just enough to keep it from entering hibernation– right up until the moment he ran out. That’s why he pulled you down there. He thought you’d be an easy mark, that maybe with a little creative twisting of the narrative, he could convince Judas that you were close enough to food. Remember how he kept calling you a monster? Unfortunately for John, he misunderstood his own creation. Project Judas wasn’t designed to harm human beings. It went against its core directive. So in that moment, when John offered you as a sacrifice, a flip switched in Judas that made it realize John had crossed the threshold and become a monster himself.”

She’s quiet as we walk out the door. “You think he really was that Johnathan Screech guy?”

I shrug. “Maybe. I doubt there are dental records to double check, but based on what you’ve said tonight, it wouldn’t surprise me if Screech couldn’t let his project die. A creature like Judas… The Facility probably didn’t have a means of terminating it, so they buried it instead. Sealed it behind blast doors a kilometer beneath the earth. Then they erased all records of this base ever existing.” My SUV is gleaming black, impossible to miss against the ruinous backdrop of ancient humvees. I crack the passenger door. “Need a ride?”

She smiles. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile all night, and I can’t help but smile back. “Thank you,” she says. “For not killing me.”

“Don’t mention it.”

She clambers into the seat, and just as I’m about to close the door, she stops me. “Wait,” she says quickly. “I forgot earlier, but John mentioned another entrance. One used for freight… That’s probably how he got back into the bunker after they sealed it up. He seemed to know everything about that place.”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “I figure he must have.”

I close the door and circle to the driver's side.

“So what do we do now,” she asks as I hop in. “About that thing, Project Judas?”

"Nothing," I say, plugging the key into the ignition and giving it a twist. The engine rumbles to life. “As far as I’m concerned, that creature isn’t a monster. And that means it’s not my problem.”

The vehicle rattles as we pull out of the base and onto the jungle road. Maria twists in her seat. She looks back through the rear window as her worst memory falls further and further behind us. “If it isn’t a monster, then what it is it?” she asks.

Words drift around my head. Definitions. I’m trying to figure out how to explain what it is that she and I saw, what it is that more people will see in the coming weeks. I’m trying to think of a way to tell Maria that whatever that thing was, she doesn’t need to be afraid of it. None of us do.

I open my mouth to reply, but I’m interrupted by a microphone howl. It’s distant. Far away. I crane my head and look up through the scatter of vines passing above us. And then I see it. A dark speck on the horizon. It’s little more than a dot against the moonstreaked clouds, but I know that if it were closer, I’d see a creature with six wings. I’d see a shadow with cinderlight eyes. A body of black static.

I’d see a guardian angel– one with plenty of work to do.

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jgmartin · 3 months