Toward the creature.
He swung past the clutching legs as the shrieking creature blindly tried to feel him out, and plunged the dagger directly in the center of the abdomen. The weight of his body pulled the blade downward, slashing the membrane open. He thought he heard the relieved sigh of hundreds of voices as they were released.
A steaming shower of greenish-white ichor slopped across his face and chest. The scream of the spider was the whine of a million mosquitoes, the legs closed in to try to pull him away. Each leg was tipped with long clawed fingers that seized desperately.
No.
His teeth were gritted in a rictus snarl; one hand clutched a handful of wiry hairs, the other stabbed repeatedly. Something slammed against his back. They had fallen to the floor, the spider on top of him. The legs jerked and writhed wildly, the spider’s screams rang in his head.
Fran screamed and stepped in, firing until her rounds were spent. She screamed again as the groping legs pulled her under. Michael leaped after her, waving the lantern. Wherever the light touch, the inhuman flesh sizzled. One of the flailing limbs knocked him sideways. He struck the wall hard and collapsed. The light shattered against the floor.
Guy stabbed and slashed, unable to stop. To stop was to die. He had to keep moving, keep stabbing…
“Guy…”
Guy finally stared at Michael’s hand on his shoulder. He realized that the screams had finally stopped. The creature was dead. Only the limbs moved, twitching involuntarily.
“It’s over. It’s dead.”
Guy rose from the creature’s innards, covered in blood and viscera. He leaned against the wall, panting before he managed to stand upright, looking around.
“Fran?”
Her voice was faint. “I’m here.”
Michael and Guy searched frantically, pushing aside quivering limbs until they found Fran under part of the steaming corpse. One of the creature’s limbs was punched right through her chest. Michael groaned as he fell beside her.
Guy knelt down and cradled her head gently. “Fran…”
She tried to smile. “It’s ok. I know it’s… bad.”
“I’m sorry, Fran. This is my fault. You shouldn’t have been involved.”
Fran winced as she shook her head. “No. You… needed our help. It’s like you… said, Guy.” She coughed, staining her lips crimson. “We were… chosen.”
Her body sagged as her eyes filmed over. Guy carefully laid her down and closed her eyes. Michael’s shoulders shook as he covered his face in his hands.
Guy slowly stood up. He located his duffel bag and lifted it from the slick blood. “Michael.”
Michael slowly gathered himself and looked up. “It’s… still not over, is it?”
“Not yet.”
Michael gazed at Fran as he stood. His fists clenched tightly. “Let’s do it, then.”
They turned and ascended the final stairwell. When they reached the door to the roof, Guy turned to Michael. “This is as far as you go.”
“What? But I thought…”
Guy set the duffel bag down and pulled out a contraption that looked to Michael like a pretty large explosive. Guy pressed a few buttons on the display.
“Whatever happens, this can’t be allowed to spread. When I go through that door, I will be on the other side. The door will close. When you open it, you will still be here.”
Michael’s hands trembled. He hastily wiped them on his shirt. Getting these bloodstains out will be impossible. It was funny what the mind thought of in moments of sheer panic.
“You’re… leaving me?”
Guy’s face was resolved, more focused and sure than Michael had ever seen him. “I’m giving you a chance to survive. The focus will be on me. If I’m right, you should be able to go to the fire escape and get to the ground. When you do, get as far away from the mill as you can.”
He pointed at the bomb. “This will go off in fifteen minutes. It should be enough to level the building, given all the compressed air and dust in this place. I can’t take the chance of the Threshold remaining open. It has to end here.”
“What… what about you? How will you be able to get away?”
Guy looked Michael in the eye. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me. Only that this evil is stopped.”
The two men looked at each other. Guy nodded.
“Remember — as far away as possible. I hope you make it, Michael.”
Guy reached in his shirt and pulled the key medallion out. Immediately it glowed with a faint light. The door handle emitted an answering glow. Though it was impossible, the door had altered. It appeared antiquated; rusted and old. The surface was covered with the frozen features of endless screaming faces.
The key slid into the elaborately carved handle. Guy turned it and opened the door.
Michael gasped.
It is not the mill of the roof. The clouds were liquid flame. The rooftop was an ancient castle tower with black, rutted flagstones and ramparts made of human skulls.
The wind shrieked like the voices of the dead.
Michael’s mouth hung open. He raised a mute hand as Guy stepped through the doorway. He did not look back.
The door closed before Michael could say a word. He quickly stumbled to the door. It was once again normal. Just the door to the mill as it always was. He opened it and stepped outside.
He was immediately soaked by the pouring rain. The rooftop appeared normal. The wheat silos were clearly visible, the conveyor clicked along as it transferred the raw product from one bin to the next. Michael looked around frantically.
“Guy?”
No one answered.
“I can’t… I can’t believe it.”
Something hummed. It was a sound like arcs of unbridled electricity. Michael turned.
A quivering cord of violet-black energy stretched from the rooftop to the sky until it was lost in the dark clouds that hovered ominously above the mill like a descending tornado. The cord pulsed, crackling like lightning. For a brief moment Michael saw something in that pulse, an image like a hologram that flashed for an instant. It was Guy, walking toward a towering figure that wore shadows like a normal man wore clothes.
The image faded away. Nothing was left but the pulsating energy cord and the torrential rain.
“Jesus Christ.”
Michael searched until he spotted the fire escape at the edge of the roof. He hobbled over and painfully clambered onto the ladder. It was slippery and his injured arm handicapped his movements, but he descended as fast as he could, dwindling down into the pouring rain.
Unselective Paramnesia
When Guy strode out to the rooftop he was immediately struck by the sensation of repetition; an echo across boundaries he could not see but knew existed.
Everything was blurry, the colors washed out. Burning towers shot pillars of wavering flame into a sky that already rippled like liquid fire. Ghostly faces appeared and vanished in the hellish clouds, screaming in agony and terror.
The beacon flickered brilliantly, a sizzling cord of continuous lightning that crackled into the fiery heavens. The surrounding towers were cloaked with Others in numbers so thick that the walls appeared sentient, spires of fluttering wings and shifting bodies. Their forms differed, but each was as twisted and hideous as the next. Countless pale eyes glimmered as they gazed his direction, their silence as loud as a thousand screams in his mind.
“I have been waiting for you.”
Guy turned to face the Other One.
Velvet shadows draped the tall, gaunt figure whose face was partially covered by a richly lacquered opera mask beneath the wide brim of his feathered hat. The visible flesh of his face was the color of polished bone, the lips bloodless as they quirked in an almost smile. His voice was oddly soothing, soft as a mother’s whisper when he spoke.