The crumbling tarmac, loose planks, and gravel skitter beneath your bare feet. The stench of everything laid to waste vanishes with the rushing wind. Finally, the bay of undulating emerald and sapphire comes to view. The dock stretches before you, closer and closer you stumble.
Behind you, it charges. Sheet metal clatters from the sheds, pebbles vibrate. The waves reverse with each reverberating footstep.
You reach the slip, not glancing back. Two knots. Your callused fingers pull and push the rope, reversing the motions taken by surer hands years ago. The thing's feet crack like thunder as it makes landfall on the open stretch of space. No further than a few hundred meters now. One knot undone.
Wood snaps as the old ships groan somewhere behind you. Cords of tendons and ligaments bulging, your wrists tremble, straining as your palms perspire. The rope loosens. More splintering wood, not from a single source, but everywhere, as if every abandoned ship in the yard has come to life. The dock shakes from its foundation and a long shadow looms over you.
You throw the rope from its slip and dive into the dinghy, the metal hull flying up and striking you with a resounding bang. The smell of decay passes as the fresh air rising from the sea overtakes it. Rolling belly up, you press both heels against the pylon.
It is enough; the momentum carries you into deeper water and you climb over the aluminum seats to take your place at the oars. The handles feel light as driftwood—warm as the sun itself. You row, no consideration to form or efficiency as a bout of waves slides under and splashes you thrice over. Laughter breaks from your chest, dammed there for weeks by something heavy and immovable. And when the relief fades, a lingering dread sets. You look to the docks.
The thing standing there isn't anything at all; it is a blight on the tangible, a blight on light itself. A void of darkness, expanding dozens of meters in all directions, watches patiently. There are defined edges to it, but whenever you try to find them, the spatial limits swirl and reality materializes what impenetrable blackness consumed moments before. As if aspiring to become a cosmic being, the blackness orbits objects around itself, dozens and hundreds of feet high. Yet, it is only after the initial shock you realize the objects are the same: cross-shaped masts, torn from the ship graveyard, floating upside-down.
YOU ARE READING
The Second Stage
HorrorA world unseen dies over and over. It shrieks at a pitch that you cannot hear. It rots with a stench that you will never quite know. It isn't a place meant for you and I, it is merely a bank for the dead and dying; a vault of visceral agony. I...
