Chapter Nine.
Albatross
This chapter is dedicated to a reader of mine, Christina Pfieffer. Thanks for all you do.
Jane followed the sound of dripping water down a narrow shaft. The voices hadn’t stopped since she fell.
Rosemary. Rosemary. Welcome home.
Her breath hitched, clouding the air in front of her. The corridor felt damp and frigid, the walls glistening with a human sweat. Up ahead, a heavy metal door hung crookedly, its surface covered in rust blisters. She paused. Crane’s boots echoed softly behind her, growing closer.
She had no other option.
Jane pushed through the gap and slipped inside.
The room swallowed her. It was humid, heavy with the scent of mold and metal. Rusted bunk beds lined the walls, their frames collapsed in on themselves. The floor was littered with spent shell casings, tarnished dog tags, and something dark that might once have been fabric.
No bodies. No explanation. Only the aftermath of some ancient struggle.
In the center stood a stone slab. A reel-to-reel recorder sat atop it, its reels warped and frozen with age. Jane noticed strange symbols etched into the stone surface. They seemed to be ancient and impossible to even decipher their meaning.
On the far wall, in faded crimson, someone had written:
OPERATION ALBATROSS – DO NOT ENTER.
Jane brushed her hand across the recorder. Dust peeled away like ash.
She flipped the switch.
Static filled the room, a harsh whispering breath. Then a man’s voice came through—flat, official, and near the edge of breaking:
“Log. Operation Albatross. Day thirty-one of experiment. Transmission 0-800 hours, October 1st, 1951. We have dedicated years to this experiment and in less than a month after being placed in this strategic bunker of tunnels—it works! This has taken us by surprise, for sure. Despite our extensive preparations within the scientific, occult, and, well, military circles.”
She saw something flicker in the shadows under the row of rusted bunks. Jane’s heart fluttered. She spotted something in the corner of the room… that looked human, but it wasn’t.
“We’ve made camp in this location, and unfortunately, it seems we won’t survive another night. The infected have mutated and spread in ways we’ve never seen before…”
The figure moved forward slightly, where Jane could see a set of soulless eyes as the recorder continued to jump around.
“… they evolved in the last twenty-four hours! It has to be these tunnels and the atmosphere change, maybe you know or will find out! Some of them aren’t just mindless zombies anymore…...”
Suddenly, the recorder glitched. Letting out a full-bodied scream. A human scream ripped from a place that shouldn’t be heard from buried on a tape. It was more real than anything Jane had ever heard before.
She witnessed the eyes move against the wall like it had grown out of the concrete. A single swollen mass, immense and breathing. The creature’s torso bulged around a glassy belly-sack straining with fluid. Its sides sprouted multiple narrow limbs—sharp and jointed.
Out the sack plopped a large worm with a disgusting leech-like body.
ROSEMARY.
The creature spoke and lifted itself slightly, the belly-sack swaying. More large slimy worms plopping out. Jane took a deep breath and kept her line of sight on the corner and the floor as she took one small step back.
The tape recorder began again with another transmission:
“My friends are dead… Poncho and Mallory are dead! That bitch Vickie stabbed me and left me here to die! Locked the door…”
Jane stepped back some more. Shivering so hard that she could feel her own bones giving out beneath her weight.
Another voice comes over the recorder.
“Hello, My names Richie Savant… I don’t know what happened. I was driving down the road on the back of Robin Hood Hills and that’s when this man stopped me—”
Jane realized the creature had more than one head as the other shot from behind her and glared into her eyes. She tripped over something and fell back. Her head smacked off a metal beam and the next thing she could remember was darkness. Silence.
Maybe she would dream her life back or never wake up again.
“The corridor narrowed and lined with bodies. I drank from a black pool of water in the center of a chamber and was given a vision. Or more, my eyes were opened to the world below like never before. I found myself in an open cathedral that could not fit beneath the earth. There was no possible way.
In the center rose the Pillar with columns of fused bodies—hundreds, maybe thousands—writhing so slowly it looked like they were struggling to breathe. But really, they were screaming without noise. Their mouths open. At the top, half-absorbed into the pillar, a shape that might have been human once. The skin was glassy and translucent. His innards moving about through flesh which swam like fish under ice.
I knew then that I had made my pact with Mr. Worm Tongue.”
-Gospel of the Lost One
The wall split open with a slow, hydraulic groan—metal folding back like an eyelid peeled by an unseen hand. Christian stepped through and stopped cold. There was no possible way this was real.
This place didn’t belong to the tunnels.
A wide, black chamber spread out before him—sleek, seamless, curved like some vessel built for a species not of this world. The air felt engineered. Anticipating him.
And at its center waited a large black pool of liquid that swallowed light whole.
Christian knelt at the edge. When he leaned over it, the pool answered with his reflection—but wrong.
What happened to Christian’s face?
His head?
His face ballooned, skin swelling into obscene ridges. Pus blistered and burst down the cheeks. His jaw sagged. It wasn’t a reflection of who he was. It was a reflection of who this place had been carving him into.
The killer from the old gospel—the one the madman in the tunnels described—stared back. Head ballooned. Body warping.
A monster with his eyes.
Christian gagged. “That’s not—That isn’t me.”
Mal’s voice drifted across the chamber like breath rolling off a dying star.
“It’s exactly you,” she whispered.
Her reflection appeared behind him. But when Christian turned, she stood solid and serene, as real and beautiful as ever. Her wrists perfect. Something he couldn’t remember after finding her in the bathtub.
“This is what the tunnels made of you,” she said softly. “What the world above refused to see.”
He staggered back from the pool. “I’m not changing.”
“You already have.”
She touched his cheek. “This place only reveals what grew inside you long before you came here. What you have become.”
“Am I who I think I am?” Christian’s voice cracked. “Tell me why I look like… that.”
She shook her head.
He whispered, “Mal… I don’t want to die.”
“You did,” she said gently. “A long time ago. You just needed to notice.”
The chamber hummed—as if a machine warming up.
Christian shook his head. “If I’m dead… then what happens now? Who the hell is waiting for me? Mr. Worm Tongue won’t bring the both of us back.”
Her smile lengthened, not into a cruel one, but a loving flash. “Mr. Worm Tongue,” she said. “He’s coming. He’s been waiting for you to recognize what you are.”
Christian looked down as the black pool of liquid began to swallow his feet. The chamber was closing and the level rising. His skull vibrated with the pressure of so many horrible stories. He could hear the cries of the innocent women and children he had murdered above.
“You’re home,” Mal whispered. “Finally.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
Note from Author: This is heavy throw back to FROM THE GUTTERS, story in Those Who Live in Darkness. Stewg. Richie “Ricky” Savant the missing teenager. Heavy Lore right here.
Hope you enjoyed. Please share and tell your friends. Just winging this still!
Awh! Thank you, friend! The twists are giving me whiplash!
Loving it so much!