The Fickle Winds of Autumn

56. Towards the Light

The ravenous weight of haemagiles sunk into her shoulders and hair; she staggered on blindly; her clumsy foot stumbled and sank into a deep pit of the thick, sludgy excrement, almost to her knee.

She floundered and toppled to her left, and thrust out a desperate hand to prevent herself from falling face-first into the evil stench of the guano.

Her palm slapped hard on the sticky, slimy surface.

She tried to push herself up, out of the wretched, filthy gunge; her fingers sank in deeper - lost below the surface of the foul sludge - and snared her hand in place.

Her face was exposed; she thrashed frantically with her one free arm, but could not fight off the vicious, incessant attacks; a myriad of piercing bites stung and gouged at her flesh.

The strident, unending predatory screech overwhelmed her reeling mind.

She squeezed her eyes and mouth even tighter shut; she twisted and wriggled her trapped leg, determined to free herself and keep moving; the seeping quagmire squelched and swallowed her further down into its foetid foulness.

A cold weakness of fear shivered across her drained body.

She must move.

She must get out or die where she was.

She leant her weight forward and tried to lever herself out with her free leg and arm.

The heaving storm of voracious haemagiles redoubled their angry onslaught.

She pushed and kicked; the tenacious stench clasped her; the deep ammonia fumes burnt acrid tears from her eyes.

The thin surface crust of the guano cracked and swallowed her other leg and arm.

The marauding haemagiles tore at her from all directions - her back, her legs, her arms and head; she kicked and wrestled her captive, useless limbs; she exhorted her enfeebled frame to fight, to push, to escape - but the flailing panic of her efforts only squashed her down deeper into the stinking, sludgy quagmire.

Her weary body faltered and sagged; her energy and hope drained and bled; the heaving cyclone tore and raked at her doomed flesh.

She could not hold out much longer.

She forced herself to glance forward - perhaps to use her eyes for one final time - to blink through the terrible dark blizzard at the light which flooded in from the cave entrance, still a cruel and impossible distance away.

The bold outlines of Aldwyn and Ellis hobbled clear, into the shining depths of the waiting sunlight.

They had made it!

They were both safe!

A shattering wave of relief and sadness fragmented across her.

Her companions did not deserve to die so cruelly, so wretchedly after all the kindness and help they had given her.

It was her fault they were there at all.

But now they would live.

Ellis would live.

He would live - but without her.

Her dark consciousness came in fits and starts; it drifted beyond her control.

Blood oozed down across her creased face and split from her tormented forehead.

A torrential weight of the tiny pulsating creatures seethed and pressed on her; their ferocious frenzy stung and carved into her flesh.

Her ears blocked with wriggling, barbed teeth; her hair buried under a crawling, burrowing mass of jabbing, bitter mouths.

The writhing, unceasing pestilence forced its way mercilessly into her nostrils; she held her thudding breath and knew her final despairing moments were close; the irresistible, feasting burden crushed her weakened body down into the suffocating, putrid faeces; her hope of reaching the daylight extinguished forever with every fresh, piercing bite.

Her lungs stretched taut; her will sapped; she wanted to scream and gasp for breath; she opened her mouth, but the remorseless invaders stormed and wriggled between her choking lips; they tore at her tongue and the inside of her cheeks; they suffocated her as they gorged on the fleshy parts at the back of her vulnerable throat.

She knew her next strangled breath would be her last - she would soon be making her own personal contribution to the pile of bones she had so recently been walking over.

It would not be a pleasant way to be called into the arms of the Surrounder - but the nuns had taught that none of us can ever choose how, or when, that meeting would take place.

A dark weakness overtook her like none she had ever felt or known and drained her of all thought and energy.

Her head swam in dizzying, black waters.

She could no longer sense the millions of tiny cuts to her flesh, only the rapid beating of her own distant heart; she clung on desperately for a final few vital moments of her life.

She could no longer breathe or think or feel.

A sudden spasm of tightness gripped at her shoulder; a vast engulfing blackness dissolved and overwhelmed her.