DUEL IN THE DARKNESS

 

Major Richard Blaine has led his Spartan 300 into a deathtrap, a realm between worlds. How will he save those who trusted him from an alien hell?

DUEL IN THE DARKNESS

“Don’t fight the darkness, Richard. Simply bring in the light, and the Darkness will disappear by its very nature.”

– Helen Mayfair

 

What had Helen whispered to me in that French Quarter alley after death had silently crept by us on clawed feet?

“Ships that pass in the night, and speak to each other in passing, only a signal shown … and a distant voice in the darkness. 

So, on the ocean of life, we pass and speak to one another, only a look or a voice, then darkness again and deep silence.”

“Pain! Who brings me pain?”

It was an eerie, gruesome voice … as if an unclogging drain had been granted speech.

The volume of it was immense, as if a Titan or Fallen Angel squatted wetly in front of me. I remembered Helen’s words about light versus darkness and slung my rifle back over my shoulder.

There was more than one kind of weapon. And you used the right one against the proper enemy … or you suffered.

The men and nurse behind me squirmed on their feet as if in agony. What was wrong with them?

‘They are being mentally assaulted by images so foul their minds will soon fracture and shatter.’

I turned my head to the Spartans and hissed low, 

“Fill your heads with the brightest memories of childhood you have. If you want to keep your souls, do it now! Now!”

I stepped closer to the tentacled nightmare that filled the opening that had to have been forty feet high and wide if it was an inch.

Some instinct, or perhaps the murmuring of Sentient, kept my eyes from looking it full on.

“More Pain! You! You spined maggot. You bring me pain?”

Time and times are but cogwheels, unmatched, grinding on oblivious to one another. 

Occasionally … very rarely … the cogs fit; 

the pieces of the cosmic wheel slip then snap together momentarily and give men faint glimpses beyond the veil of this everyday blindness we call reality.

The majority of people go past those doors that are half ajar, thinking them closed, 

and fail to notice the faint stirrings of the great curtain that hangs ever in the form of appearances between them and the world of causes behind.

I know I would have passed by this door if the lives of those who trusted me had not been at stake.

‘You can speak to this abomination if you will endure the agony of it.’

I nodded and immediately regretted it as my throat, lips, and tongue seemed to spasm in impossible, fearsome ways.

“I bring you death if you force me.”

“Your words. I understand them. How?”

I drew in a breath to steel myself for renewed agony. “You will have to pay to find out.”

“Pay? Here in śāpagrast, it is I who make souls pay not pay tribute to spined maggots.”

It laughed like a clogged drain fighting the attempts to be cleared. My Spartans whimpered. My advice was not working.

Sentient hissed within my mind. 

‘Do something, Blaine, or they will soon be drooling caricatures of what they once were.’

The Monstrosity kept on, 

“The sands of the realm of  śāpagrast is not as the sand of other realms, for śāpagrast lies nearest of all to the world’s rim.  

And strange winds, blowing from a gulf no learned creature may hope to fathom, have sown its ruinous fields with the grey dust of corroding planets, the black ashes of extinguished suns.”

It laughed again, and all my Spartans fell to their knees mewing and holding their heads with both hands.

“Here in śāpagrast, lie in wait for prey emancipated  demons left homeless by the destruction of their antiquated hells. Pay! Pay what, spined maggot!”

“You … will … let … my … People … GO!”

“Thy audacity offends me! Only one could speak so to me … AND YOU ARE NOT HE!”

My Spartans fell to the sands of this accursed cave and howled.

I asked Sentient for a miracle … and she granted it.

“I am STILL he!”

I waved my left hand with an intricate flourish. The image of the English Channel parting for the charge of my Spartan 3oo filled the cavern.  

It was accompanied by the strange echo of the roaring of surging waters protesting the abeyance of Natural Order.

“No! It cannot be!”

“Yes! LET … MY … PEOPLE … GO!”

“No!”

“Then, let this be on your head!”

I had always wondered where the tons of water of the dammed English Channel had gone.

I smiled. I suddenly knew where. It had gone where I had willed them now.

Tons of sea water crushed down upon either side of my Spartans, sweeping the hundreds of the unseen demons away from those who trusted me. 

Those scaled things wailed and choked and thrashed.

“NO!”

I twisted and roared to my Spartans struggling to their feet. “Run! Run for the outside. Now!”

They ran.

The Old One, as now I knew it to be, roared also. “No! I will consume them one and all!”

“Not if you die first!” I yelled at it, rushing straight at him, both palms open to touch its repellant flesh with my artificial hands.

I almost stumbled as I smelled Helen’s strange, exotic perfume and heard her murmur in my left ear …

Left she always told me was her favorite side, for it was the side in which the heart beat.

“The Valiant fight alone.”

Oh, how I wished I had kissed her that time before Mr. Morton interrupted us.

Just once.

As my palms touched the loathsome Old One, I whispered, “Helen, I love you.”

The Old One screamed as if in agony. Not blackness, but purest white enveloped me.

For a heartbeat, I felt soft, feathery wings enveloping me … lifting me as if my body weighed nothing.

And for a precious heartbeat, my hands no longer throbbed.

Then, there was blackness … but not before a light kiss pressed down upon my lips.