No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) Read Free

took a
canteen from his belt to wash the worst of the blood away.
    “Makes me
about as pretty as you, then.”
    Iayn
stared down at the body. She was naked save for a rotten-looking animal pelt.
Even with her face split, her eyes were still somehow frantic.
    “It’s
deep, but not bad,” Haran told Foss, stoppering the canteen. “It’ll bleed;
nothing much we can do about that except keep it clean.”
    Iayn faced
them. “C’mon then, I don’t fancy waiting around here like rats in a box.”
     
    Bodies
appeared in the passage; first one, and then a second, and then more and more
until it became difficult to walk over them. Foss, face still throbbing, knelt
and examined one.
    “This one
cut his own throat.”
    “Looks as
if they killed themselves,” said Haran, leaning over another.
    “Look for
him.” Iayn knew the thin man wouldn’t be here, but they searched anyway.
    The bodies
led to a wide circular space, where they were spread out rather than almost
piled together in the narrow confines of the passage. Again, each was dead by
his or her own hand, some more violently than the others. It took some amount
of will to cut your own throat or disembowel yourself; a kind of determination
Haran, Foss, and Iayn couldn’t quite comprehend.
    Iayn stood
over one woman, her face a torn-up mess. The wounds and the blood and bits stuck
to her hands held his focus until he felt, rather than heard, the walls breath.
The suicide chamber, for lack of a better name, seemed very much alive. Iayn
got the impression it had been holding its breath for a moment.
    “This
looks to be all of them,” said Foss. “Doesn’t make sense.”
    “It does.”
Iayn prodded one body with the toe of his boot. “Some of them have pieces
missing.”
     
    The walls
pulsed as the breathing intensified — as if the place was waking up, but not
due to their presence. They followed the passage, which continued only a short
way after the suicide chamber, to its conclusion. A second, much smaller
chamber greeted them — no, not a chamber, more like a tomb.
    That was
it, Iayn thought. It was a tomb, though not one meant for the dead. Quite the
opposite.
    A
tremulous quiver ran through the stone, almost making it flap like cloth in a
breeze.
    It was a
birthing tomb.
    The thin
man had his back to them. He faced an altar and though he must have heard them
enter, he did not turn. Iayn saw the flash of the dagger, but then it was too
late. Something ripped quickly, almost a whisper underneath the rapid breathing
of the walls.
    The thin
man slumped forward and slid off the altar, his legs kicking fitfully as blood
poured from the wound he’d inflicted on himself. Mostly in shadow, what lay on
the altar was indistinct, but Iayn saw enough.
    It was
just tissue, but where before it was still, now it was animated like something
washed up from the deep ocean. It did not rise, but opened like a mollusk — it
was a trembling mass of pieced-together flesh. Just looking at it, Iayn found it
hard to keep his mind from dribbling away a bit at a time. Perhaps only the
presence of his friends kept him from running.
    It slid
off the altar, wet flesh grinding against old stone, and all but plopped to the
floor. The sound put Foss in mind of meat dropped to the ground in an abattoir.
Then it stood on legs thin as a bird’s.
    “Run or
fight?” Haran asked, fighting to keep his voice steady.
    Though it
lacked a head, it clearly turned to look at them. Slowly, but with mounting
speed it came forward and made the choice for them.
     
    Hitched as
they were under a stand of stunted trees, the horses were spared the worst of
the drizzle that poured down from the west. They bore it because they could do
nothing else but wait for their riders to return.
    A splash
somewhere sent ripples through the water, and two of the horses flicked their
ears towards the sound. Something sloshed through the water, heavy and slow,
and all three turned in its direction.
    The smell