Chapter Ten
The Long Dead
“When you come back to me, you will not remember the pain.
When you come back to me, you will not remember resistance.
When you come back to me, you will stand where she once stood, and where all the others failed.
When you come back to me, you will remember your real name.
And when you speak it aloud, the valley will open, the tunnels will rise, and the world above will remember me.
You are not reading this. You are remembering it.”
-Random scribblings on dried flesh, found in Psych Ward after The Fires.
The darkness lifted in thin layers for Jane, like wet paper peeling away as her vision returned. Her skull throbbed from the fall. She pushed herself upright.
She blinked hard, remembering the creature that was in the room with her before. Jane looked around but saw no faces in the shadows. No slug-like worms on the floor. Nothing in the corner of the room.
Jane staggered back, breath flickering in her chest.
A face breached the depths of darkness. Swollen and distorted. It appeared seamlessly puffed, with skin stretched like wax dripping from bone. Yet, the eyes were undeniably human. They opened wide, and the head tilted sideways as if it were nearly dislocated.
“No—no, that’s not—” Jane choked.
But it was too late.
“...welcome home... Rosemary...” it hissed, its gaze deep and unsettling.
“No,” she cried out with tears in her eyes. “I don’t know you! I don’t know any of this!”
“Oh, but you do.”
The chamber walls pulsed with the words as the creature spoke. It’s thin frame shifting with the shadows.
“You loved him before you forgot your name.”
“Shut up!” Jane shook her head violently. “That’s not possible—”
Turning her gaze from the horrifying spectacle in front of her, Jane noticed something lurking in the distant corner of the room. A corpse was stretching out toward her, appearing both zombie-like and abandoned, its skin aged and dusty, as if it had been lying there for centuries. The sight was both familiar and unsettling, as though she had seen it before, but couldn’t quite place it.
The corpse’s unblinking eyes fixed intently on her, sending chills down her spine. Jane’s heart pounded in her chest, each beat echoing in her ears like a war drum. She stumbled backward, her breath quickening as panic clawed at her throat. Her boot landed on something soft.
She looked down.
The book.
Her blood turned cold. Jane fell to her knees. For some reason, she knew what this book was, made of skin and bleeding still. It was the book of the damned, The Worm Tongue Gospels. But how could she remember?
The corpse lips peeled back in a sick, tender smile. Still no words. There was no need, this chill of its smile said everything she needed to know. Jane looked up in the corner where the creature was… gone.
Something was telling her the answers she needed were in this grotesque book.
“There is a wall far below the others, slick as glass and warm as skin. In that wall lives a man—or what’s left of one. His body has melted into the stone, ribs showing through it like fossils still breathing. You’ll think at first, he’s dead. You’ll think that, but it’s only a trick.
He isn’t. He watches you without eyes.”
-Gospel of the Wanderer
Jane took one step back—
BANG.
The sound cracked through the chamber like a spine snapping in two. A muzzle flash carved a momentary slice of light into the darkness.
Jane spun.
Sheriff Crane stood in the doorway, coat soaked with sweat and mud, revolver shaking in both hands. His eyes were sunken, fever-slick, glimmering with a kind of terror that comes only from seeing too much of the wrong thing.
“Don’t… move…” Crane rasped. His voice was shredded, like he’d been screaming alone for hours.
“Crane—” Jane choked.
“Don’t say my fuckin’ name.” He stepped inside; gun aimed at her chest. “Don’t you dare say it like we’re on the same side.”
He looked around and instantly lost the small composure he had left. His knees almost buckled. “Christ almighty… I didn’t want to come back here cause I knew you’d be down here…”
Jane backed away until her back hit the stone table. “Put the gun down. Listen to me, please—”
“No no no no. You don’t get to talk now.” His eyes snapped to the book in her hands, and he nearly vomited. “You touched it. You actually touched the goddamn thing?”
“You’ve never read it?” She swallowed hard. “Crane, what’s happening—?”
“That book is of the damned. It chooses it’s reader,” he hissed, stepping closer, “are what’s happening. You’re the key. You’re the one the tunnels wouldn’t shut up about. My father warned me. Everyone in my bloodline has warned me.”
His voice cracked—something between grief and awe.
“You’re Mr. Worm Tongue’s bride.”
The words hit her like a hammer to the ribs. Jane stared at him, stunned, and out of breath.
Crane continued to speak—frantically and filled with fear—like someone trying to escape his own mind.
“Do you really think you arrived here by chance? That a head injury and a crash led you to my town? To me?” He pointed the gun at her head. “No. This is all part of his plan.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Oh, I’m making perfect sense,” Crane snapped. “You just don’t remember your purpose here yet.”
“So, are you going to shoot me?”
“Well, no.”
“Then why do you have that gun pointed at me?” Jane asked. “Doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Crane lowered his weapon and ran his hand through his hair. His face grew bright red, the pain in his eyes told a story which Jane would never understand. The corpse in the wall reached out toward Crane.
“Daddy, I’m sorry…” Crane struggled to keep his composure.
Something massive shifted behind Jane along the wall.
Crane’s gun arm trembled. He took a step back, then forward, then back again—caught between duty, madness, and a horror too big for any man to hold.
“Don’t let it take you,” he whispered desperately. “Behind you!”
He lifted his gun. Jane dunked.
A shape towered behind her, dripping black ichor, unfolding into the silhouette of something crowned with writhing tendrils, something born from a god-sized hunger.
Crane saw it and let out a broken, animal howl.
“IT’S HIM!” His voice cracked in half. “RUN, ROSEMARY! RUN OR HE’LL—”
And Crane’s scream cut short like someone had ripped the sound out of his throat.
TO BE CONTINUED…