Marin's Dale

V

Paul had never seen it this bad. The rancid, murky water was rising fast. This, Paul could understand. This, was nothing new. But the water was also bubbling. Bubbling in a way he couldn't grasp. It looked like somebody had gone to the butcher's shop and thrown in everything they found.

Mounds of sinewy red and slimy smithereens and squishy bobbing lumps—like tissue and muscle and meat mangled in the most merciless way. Paul took a breath to collect himself. The smell was enough to make a normal man vomit. God was it awful. And warm. So very, very warm.

But where the hell was it coming from?

He tried to think, and he had been trying to get his boys on the walkie-talkies, but the things weren't working. What was causing the interference?

Paul looked to his submerged legs. A worker's helmet moved by, followed by gloves, half-submerged in the muck. He stared at the gear for a second, and then it registered. He recognized the crack on the side of the helmet—the small size of that helmet. It belonged to Terrance.

Steam was coming from the bubbling bath of crimson. There was no time.

                      ###

A cheetah chased a gazelle with unmatched speed. The gazelle flicked through thick bushes as it approached a body of water. The cheetah pounced.

CLICK

Audrey's eyes widened. All eyes widened.

The empty channel produced white noise, a fizzing, draining, vacant noise. Eyes focused on the snow pattern displayed; white, jagged and infinitely proliferating.

All eyes remained wide. But the pupils were shrunken.

Malcolm switched to channel 35.

More snow.

CLICK

Snow

CLICK

An anchorwoman muttered someth—

CLICK

With each successive change from a blank channel of snow to a working channel, the students moved. They moved like fish on a line, yanked forward, then back; forward then back. Barkly was drumming his fingers rapidly. His feet jiggled on the floor.

And with every channel of snow, every pupil of every eye in Mr. Ghulic's class shrunk considerably. A collection of pinheads. Impossibly small, impossibly black, pinheads.

                     ###

The pipeline was empty, of workers. The terrible crimson wash had risen far beyond any level ever seen, nearly consuming all of the dark sewer tunnel. Everywhere, scalding tendrils of steam hissed as the bubbling blood-like liquid spat and churned. However, it was no longer rising. Nearly reaching the top of the tunnel, near the manholes, but the sludge had stopped rising.

Like rapids in a violent mountain river, the red waters ravished everything. The noise was so loud, so deafening, that it surely would shatter the eardrums of any living creature within the pipeline, assuming the liquid hadn’t killed the creature first.

But this was not the case. For something was alive down there, something hidden at length down the miles of tunnel; something emitting a searing moan with so much volume, so much power, that the blast of water seemed almost soft in comparison.

Something was alive down there, somewhere amid the sea of red and shadows of black—something nobody had ever seen. Something huge.

                    ###

Audrey needed to get the hell outta here. She could see Barkly gripping his desk. His fingers were turning white. He was shaking, and he was mumbling too. He was trembling more and more now, as if somebody somewhere had hooked him up to an electrical current. It was becoming violent.

How is nobody noticing this?

Audrey stared back to the front of the class, trying desperately to ignore the students around her, with their blank faces, and their lifeless eyes—like puppets. Malcolm hadn't moved in sometime. How long had he been like this, standing like that, not saying a thing or making a move, or giving any sign that he still had a pulse? Audrey could feel her heart in her throat and at her wrist and bursting at the countless junctures of her circulatory system. She felt like somebody had pressed needles into her every square inch of being.

She wanted to vomit.

B-ding.

Audrey dropped her eyes to her lap. The cellphone in her hands displayed a new message. It was from Tyler. He was a few seats ahead of her, but he hadn't turned to look at her all class. He was sitting silently like stone—just like the rest of them.

Audrey read the text:

lets scram.. ASAP

A piece of chalk began to move about the scant empty space. Mr. Ghulic's right arm meandered, tracing a zigzag pattern, slow, continuing, slow, random.... Mr. Ghulic rotated to the left, eyes focused. On nothing.

He shivered.

Audrey saw it before anybody else. It was like blood, but not like blood. It was thick and crimson and began to descend as if molasses—like the driest of spit that didn't want to leave the human orifice. Down, down, down...

How it did not break off and drip to the floor, Audrey could not understand.

Malcolm turned from the board then. He didn't face the class, but he faced the door to the hallway. His face was paler than usual; completely blood-drained it seemed. With his high cheek bones and naturally gaunt look, he was practically a cadaver. The liquid descended from his ear.

"I will be back."

And like that he was gone. Into the hallway and no more. The class sat in silence. Barkly convulsed in his seat. He was smothered with sweat. His eyes were bulging. He was mumbling nonsensically.

The rest of the class continued to sit—as if dead. Tyler shot Audrey a look. She nodded. The two of them got up and left.