Link to part 3
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/10v28xj/the_big_rock_candy_mountain_part_3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
The alley narrows too much to progress. If I was alone, I could try and push further, or maybe climb up, wedging myself between the two buildings.
But I’m not, and it’s too late to abandon Rabbit even if I wanted to.
The creature can’t jam it’s body through the claustrophobic alley.
If you’re feeling relieved, I want you to read that sentence again, very literally.
Pointed metal looking limbs tear and scratch at the brickwork, the creature shines it’s blinding hazard light stare down the alley, I shut my eyes against the stinging glare.
Rabbit still hasn’t moved, hasn’t made so much as a noise, I find myself thinking maybe that’s all for the best. Whatever this lanky horror has planned for us, being knocked out for it, is probably the best case scenario.
The creature is massive, deadly and strong as hell, armed with countless limbs that spring from inside it’s body like sliplock blades.
Unfortunately for it, physics, give or take, still works here. The tips of it’s dozen razor tipped limbs, strong as they are, can only wear down the brickwork by scratches and gouges. I’m sure, with room to move, this thing could tear down a wall in seconds, but enraged, and wedged in, it’s progress is slowed to a crawl.
The problem facing me is the fact that there is no stopping that crawl. As the hours tick by the creature inches it’s way toward me, slow, inevitable death.
My nose broken, the crank sets my face on fire. But if I’m going out, I’m going out happy.
My mind starts to wander, and I find myself thinking of a similar situation from my high school days.
I was 16 and it was the first time I’d worked up the balls to go anywhere other than a medicine cabinet to score. I’d graduated long past weed, and looking back I was probably in the first stages of a minor opiate addiction.
I don’t remember the greasy fucker’s name, Steve, I think it was. He was exactly what you’d expect of a person who made his money selling hard drugs to young kids. Short, perpetually in need of a shower, and with a coyote in a nursery look of hunger about him.
I wanted a few percs, this rotten shit head was trying to get me to upgrade to a bag of H, I’d half settled on the middle ground of a gram of coke when his front door was kicked in.
Much like you guys, I assumed cops, and bolted to a back bedroom of the mold reeking bungalow. I crouched by the door, pressing my ear against the cheap pressboard.
The argument that I heard in the living room had nothing to do with law enforcement, and everything to do with debt collection.
But our sweat stained fan of children, as you can probably guess, didn’t have the assets to cover what he owed.
In my experience, drug deals, on this kind of scale seldom get outright violent, too much risk, not enough reward. But they do get very aggressive, and weird.
Words were exchanged, drugs were consumed, and a plan was formulated in which Steve would call over his least liked friends, who would then be robbed until the debt was covered.
Just shy of two days I stayed in that bedroom, scared out of my wits and praying to anything that would listen to let me get out of this alive. I heard beatings, threats, and a bunch of other shit no 16 year old ever should.
Of course, this sad little cobble in the path that is my life ended as happily as possible. A free sampler pack of damnation not to rat and a nickname, Dormouse.
My current situation though, there’s no happy ending. Just crimson steel claws that are now less than a foot away from my face.
The scraping is frenzied now, a screeching, mechanical din that pierces my skull. I don’t even bother to put up my hands, once this thing gets it’s talons on me, one more layer of flesh and bone isn’t going to matter.
Early morning sunlight begins to illuminate the alley, I shudder as the glowing eyes of the creature shut off in time with it, just like the Streetlamp it resembles.
A sound like hail, then a massive crash from above, I rip my attention from the Lovecraft B-side trying to kill me and see something that could be somewhat accurately described as my salvation.
More accurately though, it was an old, rotted industrial air conditioning unit. A few hundred pounds of steel on a collision course with the creature in front of me.
What I know about monster anatomy can fit in a thimble. If you’re reading this, you likely know more than I do, but as this steel avalanche hit the lamp-like in front of me I hear plenty of wet things deep inside of it pop, one eye shatters, and with a sound like a snapping high tension wire it bends in the middle in a way nothing walks away from.
In those dull orange rays of morning, I see a silhouette leaning over the alley, familiar, though even now, unwelcome.
“Everybody gets one… fuck I’ve always wanted to say that!” Mike says with a shrill peal of laughter. I half expect him to leap from the rooftop and land beside me, but however he managed to get down it took him almost fifteen minutes before he was standing beside me, rabbit flat on the dirty cement beside us.
The creature next to us twitches occasionally, the last sparks of whatever force drives it still trying to cause pain and terror.
Mike looks worse for the wear, his clothing torn, scores of gashes covering his face and body, his eyes focus on the same thing I do.
Rabbit’s hand is a torn mess, his last two fingers are mangled and crushed beyond any hope of repair, the blood isn’t free flowing, but still spurts wildly with every movement.
Mike sighs as he grabs the appendage.
“Find me the smoothest, darkest rock you can, at least the size of a fist, a few if possible. “ His voice is monotone, I think of asking why but don’t see the point.
I bring a half dozen rocks I gather from the front garden of a hotel, Mike picks two and starts to hit one against the other.
“I’m trying to flint knap. If we don’t get these fingers off, Rabbit is dead, and try as I might I can’t seem to find a decent blade around here. “ Mike says, as thin pieces of rock separate themselves from the stones.
Mike wields thumb sized pieces of chipped flint like a surgeon, tossing each aside as it begins to crack and dull. I thought I knew my way around a vein, but this clown, severs and pinches them closed like an artisanal butcher.
As he pulls out a long spool of clear fishing line he reaches into his belt, drawing his crude, long knife, and without looking, holding it out to me, handle first.
“Make yourself useful, Kev. All this was for that coat, be a pal and get it for me? “ I’m in no position to refuse the psycho’s request as he finished patching my one actual friend in this place.
The coat flaps obscenely from the lamp-like, organic, leather like skin blending into crimson grey steel. I shudder as I think of the job I’m given.
The coat like appendage grabs and twists as I cut it, lacking any real strength but making the task of cutting it free all the more difficult.
I tumble down the wreckage of the entity, covered in thick greyish blood, holding the still twitching coat. I pick myself up and try fruitlessly to wipe the gore from my body. Mike stares at rabbit, propped up against one wall of the alley.
We carry rabbit to a disused dugout, hoping the relative shelter does him some good. Mike lights a small fire full of wet wood and plastic, and begins to cure the still moving trench coat in it’s toxic black smoke.
In a world of monsters and serial killers, magic and curses, the fact that a sick friend can still be a blow that feels almost physical, might mean I’m not completely damned.
It’s hours later when Rabbit wakes up, groggy, pale, but alive. I expect him to have some kind of freak out over his missing pieces, but he simply looks down, then to Mike.
“Good work, you a medic once upon a time? “, Rabbit says, I tense up, questions and violence go hand in hand with our unpredictable companion.
“Good guess, but no. Just picked a few things up. “ Like always, the tall man’s reply is cryptic and dark.
In a couple of days we were off again, ready to see what else The Path has to offer.
What it had to offer was a world that seemed less and less like the one we all knew before. The longer, (or is it further? God this place screws me up sometimes.) we walked the path the more barren it became.
We spent weeks wandering down seemingly endless, lonely highways. No city lights in the distance, no truckstops, not a single tin hunting shack buried behind a treeline.
We all felt it then, how close we were getting. We stopped trying to figure out when the last time we ate or slept was, didn’t matter, we found ourselves marching through this desolate reflection of reality for days without needing so much as a wall to lean on.
One day, instead of black concrete beneath our feet, it was hard packed dirt. And off in the distance, we saw the outline of trees.
We walked toward the forest like moths to a flame, the first sign of anything other than flat fields of not-quite-wheat we’d seen in forever.
The dirt road faded to a worn footpath, a few feet before the treeline stood a massive copper plaque.
“To Heathcliff:
I brought you here, the least I could do was give you a place to stay. “
I look to Mike and Rabbit, hoping one of them has some insight, neither do.
“Do we go through? “ I say, breaking the silence, trying to see any signs of danger from within the dense grove.
“Feels like we need to. “ Rabbit replies, his tone tells me more than his words. He wants any other option.
“This is the dumbest thing we could do. Then again, seems like we have to French kiss a garbage disposal every time we need to accomplish anything here, so I’m with lefty. “ Mike on the other hand gives nothing away.
P C fucking P, in 2022 the stuff was all but legend. Every so often some backyard chemist would try his hand at making some, most of the time blow himself or his customer’s sinuses up. But not long ago it was the in thing amongst scumbags.
It’s dirty, damages everything from your nerves to your bone marrow, but God damn, you want to feel like superman?
Don’t do pcp. It doesn’t make you feel like that at all. What it does is take the unbearable rambling of X, the edginess of Ritalin, and the dumb ass confidence of booze and replaces your entire personality with all of the above. And for an added bonus, kills your nerves enough make you wake up with broken toes you didn’t notice at any point the night before.
We walk toward the forest and as we start to make out some details it looks far from the death trap we were expecting.
Strange though, for sure, the trees are thick deep brown things with smooth bark and dense canopies, studded with finger sized oblong gems. They catch the moonlight and seem to radiate it, making even the deepest parts of the grove dimly illuminated.
Stranger still, the place is teeming with life, not entities, not people, not any of the creeping horrors of The Path, but just plentiful, normal forest creatures.
“When is the last time we saw an animal? “ I say watching a chipmunk eye us for a moment before going back to doing chipmunk things.
“Never have. Path isn’t the place for em. “ Rabbit says, for the first time since we met, taking the lead.
The Path is a place of isolation, from the world, from people, even to an extent, from yourself.
But this forest, it didn’t feel isolated, it felt…. Like shelter, a reprieve from the desolation and murder of The Path.
We walk deeper, taking the odd bump of PCP, and doing our best to keep walking in a straight line despite the curiosities of the forest.
Maybe it was the drugs screwing with my mood, maybe it was the owl that I saw walking on all fours , but as we entered our second hour, I couldn’t shake a nagging feeling this place held something sinister.
But Rabbit and Mike were full on loving the place, every neon mushroom, every slow moving vicious Creek, seemed to make them feel more at peace.
I’m digging bloody furrows into my nail beds, staring down every forest critter, by the time I speak up.
“Holy Christ guys, something is wrong here. “ I blurt out.
It wasn’t subtle, as I voice my concern, every eye in the forest turns to us, two seconds of silence and observations that makes me feel tiny, and close to death.
Mike’s tone is chipper, upbeat, nothing I’ve heard from him before.
“That’s obvious Kev, and I’m pretty sure this place is picking up on our mental state.
So I’ve been trying my level best to think happy thoughts, and Rabbit has been smart enough to follow my lead. “
My heart is pounding, under the ‘gee-whiz’ demeanor, I hear real fear from Mike.
The clown points to a raccoon, about ten feet away.
At first I don’t see anything, but, eventually, there it is. It resembles a vein, or tendon, string thin trailing from the rodent to deeper within the forest.
I put back enough angel dust to clog a nostril, trying anything to get rid of this sense of dread.
“Understood. “ I say, trying to match Mike’s tone, “But I think, that fairly soon, it might be in our best interest if you… Mike’d us out of this situation. “
Mike laughs, motioning us to follow the thin pulsing cord.
“You know why I survived back where I come from, when so many people like me wind up dead or in jail?
I understand the difference between a murder, a fight, and a death sentence.
One person attacking another from a place of advantage, is a murder.
One person attacking another when both know death is on the line is a fight.
Multiple people, at a place of advantage, knowing death is on the line and attacking, is a death sentence.
I clock about two dozen things that we know nothing about at every possible angle. Which situation do you think we are in?
No Kev, this situation is going to require…” Mike’s philosophical advice is cut short by a scream from rabbit.
“It’s fucking got me! “ Rabbit bellows.
The ‘it’ in question at first appeared to me a small hole, just deep enough to break an ankle in. But as my brain made sense of what I was seeing, I could make out eyes, and teeth. Alien, mismatched, but somehow, vaguely feline.
The living pit makes no attempt to strike rabbit, but the old man is in a panic, he draws his pistol and fires it’s only two rounds into the pit creature.
Those of you that didn’t grow up with drunken pieces of shit for parents, I might have to explain something.
There is a very specific feeling that comes with being in the crosshairs of something that provides you shelter but also wants to hurt you. That feeling, that intangible, cousin of gut instinct permeated the forest like a toxic gas.
The forest creatures as one rise on their tendrils, their bodies hanging slack, each one emitting a terrible, ear shredding hiss.
Then it was a storm.
Furred and feathered bodies begin to launch themselves at us, we are bit, bludgeoned, and battered within seconds.
The look on Mike’s face says it all. His plan was ruined, and now we are literally and figuratively deep in the unknown.
He whips his head around, gritting his teeth, either insanity, rage or fear shutting him down for a few moments. “ Follow the cords! “ Mike says, bolting deeper into our newest nightmare.
The creatures are wielded clumsily, the forest itself slowing their attack, still, every few seconds, some lump of flesh in the shape of an animal, flies at us, taking a piece or slamming into us like a blind linebacker.
The tree gems flicker, weaponized photosensitivity making us trip and stumble. With every misstep the bulk of the creatures get closer, encircle us further.
I lose another tooth, and almost black out as a blob of asymmetrical fur and muscle hits me squarely in the face. Mike grabs a fistful of my shirt and throws me forward.
I have no idea whether we’re following the cords or not, it’s everything I can do to keep putting one foot in front of the other at a pace that keeps the worst of the changing, tendril creatures behind us.
The ground springs with black spines, forming an instant wall between Rabbit, myself and Mike. Before we can scream his name the fleeing psychopath bursts through the thorns, hitting the ground bleeding from more wounds than I can count.
It’s our turn to help, we pick Mike up, one of us under each shoulder, and keep him moving as he gets his bearings.
In the distance we see a clearing, perfectly circular, and somehow illuminated, a beacon of daylight in the rapidly darkening Forest.
A set up If I’ve ever seen one, but as I catch a glimpse of something that was pretending to be a bear, rapidly gaining on us, I figure whatever’s in there can’t be much worse.
We stay alert, keeping pace, getting close enough to the grove the light from within illuminates my companions.
Remember the bit about broken toes from earlier?
Mike and Rabbit look like the walking dead, soaked in blood, missing pieces of flesh that should put them on the ground from pain alone, and running with an awkward stride that speaks of torn tendons and sprained muscles. I don’t bother to check myself, I’m sure I’m in the same shape.
The clearing has an air of stillness about it, I’d say peace, but the dozens of sets of glowing eyes that are closing in on us robs any sense of peace or security.
The grotesque centerpiece to this display told a story in an instant.
The man died sitting against a tree, his body, and clothing nothing more than bones and mold covered cloth. The cracks in his skull could have just been age and the elements, but something tells me, this guy opted out.
As morbid as this is, what was sitting in the man’s lap completed this sad tale.
The housecat’s body was, for lack of a better term, fresh. No rot, no scuttling insects, but it’s head…
It was a warped, twisted, feline skull. Hundreds of the tendrils protruding from it, starting no thicker than a strand of hair. Some biological mass inside made the bone shift and move slightly.
Fear, and exertion set my heart to arrhythmia, I fall to my knees, slamming my fist against my chest. My heart begins to fall back into a steady beat, but my vision swims, my focus fails.
Rabbit is sitting, trying to catch his breath, Mike is walking over to the cat-thing, it all seems far away.
I expect Mike to swing his cane, shattering the creature into fragments, and probably saying something disturbing to top it all off.
But his weapon sits on the ground, far away.
“I get it. I honestly do, “The clown says, out of all the different personas this lunatic has worn in our time together, this one seems, genuine, “ You weren’t supposed to be here, were you Heath?
My friends, and yours, they belong here, doesn’t make it easy for them, but it’s a lot harder on us, isn’t it? “
I chalk it up to my blown out mind and failing body, but the sound of encroaching Doom seems to slow just a little bit.
“It hurts, and you have no idea why. You find your mind changing, it feels like you’re being turned into something, and you hate it.
You look around at all the monsters and fucking demons here and wonder if that’s going to be you one day. Stuck here, tearing people apart, and never knowing why. “ Mike isn’t sobbing openly, but I see tears clear a path through the blood on his face.
I can see the creatures at the edge of the clearing, to describe them individually now would do no good, whatever form they once had has long since been turned into nothing more than fangs, claws and dull, almost doll-like eyes.
“We are not the twisted shit that lives in this place. We are just two things that ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, we have a choice.
Let these guys go and I’ll stay here. We can go through whatever changes this hell hole has in store for us together. “ Mike’s offer seems, heartfelt, genuine.
There is silence, the mass of creatures is thick enough to be a wall.
The feline head turns slowly toward Mike, the purr from within is disturbing and Hollow, it matches the source less voice we all hear, “Thank you”, it says.
To our left, trees, bodies, flesh and bone separates, clearing a path out of this place.
“I wasn’t lying, this wasn’t a ploy. “ Mike says, he gets an answer, of sorts.
We hear a tiny, pathetic meow as a side of the feline corpse splits.
In a parody of birth, a kitten struggles it’s way free.
It’s clean, black, and wears a small leather collar, the tag made of the same tarnished copper as the sign we first saw, it reads, “ Jr. “.
The kitten’s body is, deformed, too round, has legs that don’t quite match, and a nearly inflexible tail in a vaguely question mark shape. It’s eyes are too small, and mouth a little too large, but it seems friendly, and curious.
The movement within the skull seems to get slower, and from all around us we can hear a sound like crunching leaves.
“I think we need to get going. “ Rabbit says, branches begin to fall from trees, the grass beneath our feet turning into sludge.
Mike reaches down, picking up the sad kitten, and placing the purring creature under his hat. It sticks it’s head through one of the many holes, making me laugh despite my wounds, or the decomposing hellscape behind us.
We exit the forest within a half hour, and set up camp along a road that looks straight out of a spaghetti western.
We take turns tending to each other’s wounds, too high and exhausted to even complain about this latest slice of hell.
The sign in the distance is massive, and flashes in outdated gaudy red neon, illuminating what looks to be a dive bar the size of a small town.
“The End Of The Line” it reads, and we all manage an exhausted cheer at it’s promise.
Link to part 5
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/11fv2lp/the_big_rock_candy_mountain_part_5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button