A WALK INTO DARKNESS

 Evil has a way of attracting evil as Major Richard Blaine discovers, along with the lesson that it is never wise to wool-gather when others depend on you.

A WALK INTO DARKNESS

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

- H. P. Lovecraft

 

My life was odd, even to me who had experienced it day by day. You would think the strangeness of it would have become commonplace.

It had not.

I saw the jarring difference between my existence and that of all those around me.

 I, myself, was both observer and observable, and so a possible object of my own stunted awareness.

But there was the rub: stunted.

I was within the picture. The only true way to appreciate a painting was outside the frame of it.

There is another world.

 But it’s in this world  … or the doorway to that world is in this reality. Wherever you are in this world, life is always and necessarily lived in detail.

Especially, the leaving of it … that is: dying.

“I am afraid,” said André beside me in the near darkness, the glow of the tunnel’s walls having ebbed to mere will-o'-the-wisps of illumination.

“Ignis fatuus” the ancient Roman legionnaires had called it. “Foolish” or Ghost Light.

I felt both foolish and almost a ghost, slipping through this mouth of shadows.

We had been marching against that strange resistance for nearly an hour, the now mostly silent Sentient had told me but moments before.

In literature, the will-o'-the-wisp metaphorically refers to a hope or goal that leads one on but is impossible to reach. In that sense, this meager illumination was fittingly called will-o'-the-wisp by me.

Of where we were headed, Sentient would only tell me: ‘Your destiny.’

That was frustratingly, maddeningly vague … as Sentient intended. I had gone against her wishes with Missy, and she was punishing me.

It was unknown the place and uncertain the time where death awaited you, so you had to expect death to find you, every time, at every place.

‘Cheery thought’ mocked Sentient, then slipped away before I could retort a fit response.

 There were things known and there were things unknown, and in between were the windows of perception.

‘Yours need cleaning’ came Sentient again. And once again, I could feel her leave my consciousness.

I felt the light hand of Nurse Reynolds on my shoulder from behind me.

“Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you, Major.”

As Helen Mayfair’s words had so often done for me in New Orleans, the wind of peace filled the slumped sails of my confidence.

“At ease?” André scoffed incredulously. “I have not been so afraid since I was with that platoon of the 45^th Division attacking the small village of Venafro.”

“Where?” grunted Reese.

The ever-knowledgeable Cloverfield said, “ A quaint little death-trap near Monte Cassino.”

“Oh, there,” drawled Sam Wilson. “Remind me never to visit.”

I hissed low to the photographer, “Have you seen any of the Spartans killed? Have the men on either side of you been shot and killed or maimed?”

“But there is this damnable skittering all about us!”

“What skittering?” I asked, suddenly feeling the fool for the thousandth time.

“It is all around us. If you could wrench your mind from its aberration, you would hear it!”

“Uh,” gasped André.

Behind me, I heard Theo whisper harshly.

“That, Mr. Renowned Photographer, is the point of my knife. Speak like that again to Rick, and I will leave your twitching body here for whatever those beasties are out there.”

Amos grunted, “You think he hasn’t been hearing them like the rest of us?”

I hadn’t. I no longer felt foolish but ashamed.

“Wh-What are they, Major?” shakily asked Taylor.

And since Evans hadn’t cuffed the man, I knew that Eric was more than a little unsettled himself and wanted to know.

Sentient murmured the answer to me, and I just as soon not have known.

“Not beasties,” I whispered. “The closest thing they resemble are insects.”

“Insects!” howled Taylor. “But they sound huge!”

There was a sound of a cuff, and Evans said low,

 “Quiet, fool. This is why the Major didn’t tell us. He didn’t want you wailing and drawing them to us. Fear draws in the wolves, don’t you know that?”

“W-Wolves? But the Major said ….”

Another sound of another cuff.

“When they were handing out brains, you must have thought they said ‘Rain,’ and you wanted to stay dry.”

Evans whispered to me, “Major, why did you pick, Stew, anyway.”

“Because when he shoots, he never misses. Never.”

Out of the darkness, I felt Nurse Reynolds’ soft pat on my shoulder.

“That was just what he needed to hear … both of them.”

Well, I had done at least one thing right. Maybe. Merde. Every victory of mine seemed to be a will-o'-the-wisp of “maybe.”

Maybe.

For as we have candles to light the darkness of night, so my “maybe’s” were candles to keep the darkness aflame in my mind, my doubts.

The library at St. Marok’s had taught me one thing only: to wake up. To join by words, my thoughts, my mind to human culture, to think myself alive.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching out towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it.

 Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.

I knew I wanted to avoid contact with the skittering bodies that clicked all around us, the smell of something acidic and ammonia-like coming from them.

Reese growled, “Give me a straight-on firefight not something like this.”

Theo said low, 

“You should know this war by now. The enemy always changes. One day, it’s the lousy weather. The next, your commanding officers that don’t know their ass, ah, butt from a back scratcher. The day after that, it’s a cliff that can’t be climbed but has to be. This is just another enemy, Reese. Deal with it.”

“But I can’t see this one,” muttered Taylor, who needed to see an enemy to shoot it.

“You can’t see a sniper, neither,” groused Mercer. “You just wait for your chance to spot him by his messing up.”

I whispered, “And they may not be an enemy until we make them one.”

“Ant” Vincent huffed, “The way they’re circling us can’t be good.”

“You’re right,” I nodded though he couldn’t see me now that the light from the walls was nearly non-existent.

I continued, “I get the sense that they are confused. Sentient is telling me that the devices all through this tunnel are … bringing us into and out of focus with their … dimension. One heartbeat they can … taste our sweat ….

“Aw, geez,” went Knight.

Theo snapped, “Don’t interrupt the Major.”

“The next, we … slip just far enough away from their … realm that they know they can’t touch us. This fading and focusing has an erratic rhythm to it that they are trying to parse … to figure out ….”

Dimitri said, “The right timing so’s as to attack us. Why aren’t we getting into a circle or something?”

Kent, a student of ancient warfare, snorted, “That very act might trigger an attack from them.”

Theo added, 

“Can you see to shoot them? No, just hear them. We’re in a tunnel. We miss them with our shots, and they will just ricochet off the walls and just as like hit us.”

Predictably, Taylor, our forever questioner, said, “Then, what do we do?”

Evans didn’t cuff the man, so I knew that question had been on the tip of his tongue as well.

I had been loathe to tell the Spartans, for it would reveal a new enemy.

“We slow our marching ….”

“What?” yelped Taylor, who immediately got cuffed by Evans.

“Eric.” I whispered. “No more sudden moves.”

I spoke a little louder. 

“Strain your eyes a bit, Spartans, and you’ll see a glimmer of light ahead of us, indicating a bend in this tunnel and our exit. No!! Keep it slow.”

The skittering around us got more frantic as those creatures sensed possibly losing their prey. Merde. The scratchings sounded so loud. Those things had to be huge.

“Prepare yourselves, Gentlemen. I believe their … leader will be standing between us and the exit. Don’t panic at his silhouette. It will not be pretty. Let me and Sentient deal with him.”

Nurse Reynolds’ voice was barely a murmur, “What will you do?”

“Improvise. My whole damn life has been one long jazz gig. This is just another tune in it.”

Floyd husked, “This ain’t real. Can’t be. Stuff like this just doesn’t happen in the real world.”

Link said, “I keep telling you guys. These are the end times.”

Vincent groaned, “Oh, give us a break with all the Revelations talk.”

Link kept on, 

“This century started with the whole damn world at war. Then, the stock market tanks. The middle of America became one huge bowl of flying dust. The world went back to butchering itself. Now, this. End Times I tell you.”

‘Your Spartans have interesting perspectives of reality.’

‘Can you blame them?’

‘Yes. Your species is blind even those of you with functioning eyes. It is blind to its folly, to its ignorance, to its history, to the future that they will make for themselves. A future born of self-loathing.’

‘You’re trying to make me not so afraid of being killed by whatever is ahead of us.’

‘It plans to do much worse than kill you, Blaine. It plans to feast on your soul.’

‘Oh, just that. You forget I played chess with Mr. Morton.’

‘You still are and do not realize it.’

To answer her, I said, 

“Link, the Bible is filled with intriguing stories about complex and flawed human beings who pondered immense moral questions and engaged in colossal clashes with evil.”

I unslung my Sig Saur Spear rifle. 

“But if they remembered they were not alone, they made it to the finish line. So will we … if we do the same thing.”

I stepped away from the group and walked to the towering, many tentacled monstrosity waiting for me … for my soul.