Roads To Hell: A Horror Anthology

Part 14 - Aurora

Helen was dreaming about a city at the bottom of a lake. In the dream, a great crack opened in the sea floor and the walls of the city, decorated with strange and unnerving designs, began to fall down. The watchtowers broke into pieces and tumbled into the abyss. How sad, to see the last remnants of this empire crumble.

Something was shaking her shoulder, trying to get her attention, but Helen couldn't take her eyes away from the ocean floor, certain that something would crawl up from the bowels of the earth to devour her. But she was underwater, so she must be drowning. She gasped, and salty water filled her mouth-

With a cry Helen sat up, sucking in deep breaths while her Swedish boyfriend, Bjorn, sat back on his heels.

"Sorry," he whispered sheepishly.

"What is it?" Her voice was rough, and her tone short. Helen didn't know whether to berate him for waking her like that, or to thank him for letting her out of the nightmare. Her chest felt tight and she tried to forget the feeling of her lungs filling with water.

Bjorn's teeth flashed. "Come and see!"

With that, he left the tent, leaving the zipper open. Frigid air seeped through the gap and Helen shivered, gathering the warm blankets around her neck. She could hear Bjorn calling her, telling her to hurry. With a groan, she pulled a jumper, jacket and snow boots on over her flannel pyjamas and long johns. It was an understatement to say that Sweden's Abisko National Park was cold in November. The very air seemed to chill her from the inside.

Stumbling out of the tent, Helen followed her boyfriend's footprints in the snow and met Bjorn a few meters away. He was sitting on a log, staring up at the sky. A look of awe on his blonde, bearded face. There was an eerie emerald glow in his sweet blue eyes. Helen looked up and nearly fell over. She made her way next to Bjorn and snuggled into his embrace.

"What is this? I've never seen anything..." she trailed off.

"The Northern Lights. Aurora Borealis," he told her, pronouncing every syllable carefully.

She hit his chest playfully, "I know that! But I've never seen so many. It's the whole sky!"

"Ja, it is unusual. But not unheard of, I think. Must be lots of solar activity."

The night sky was full of undulating waves of light. Lines of dark emerald and teal, with points of near-white. Of course, no wonder Bjorn hadn't needed a torch. Helen could probably read a book under this light. She craned her neck - yes, as far as they eye could see, in every direction. The lights seemed to sit somewhere above the tops of the trees, above the mountains, their edges blurring into the winter-dark sky, burning like green fire.

"No wonder people believed they were a sign of the gods."

Bjorn turned his head and she could feel his whiskers on her temple. He pressed a kiss there and said, "The Vikings said were from the Valkyrie, riding across the sky."

Helen wasn't sure how long they stared at the sky, but a sound broke her out of the trance. She blinked away the spots in her eyes and looked around. The lights hadn't faded, in fact they seemed to be even brighter, so bright she could see all the way down to the lake's edge. Where a single figure stood, watching them.

Helen jerked. "Bjorn!"

He kept staring at the sky, a vacant look in his eyes.

"Bjorn!" she hissed and shoved him hard.

Almost falling off the log, Bjorn looked around clumsily. "Wha-? What is it?"

"Down at the lake." Helen wasn't sure why she was whispering. "There's someone watching us."

"No, there's n-" Bjorn stopped and became very still, his ex-army skills kicking in.

"What do we do?"

"Wait here." Bjorn's voice had gone deep and hard. Helen hadn't seen this side of her boyfriend before. She knew the funny, charming Bjorn who offered her a beer on the first night she had arrived in Sweden after being transferred to a new branch. Who was this man?

Bjorn stood slowly, eyeing the figure by the lake. Then he seemed to come to a decision and started to walk towards them, boots crunching through the thick snow. Helen scrambled to catch up with him - no way was he leaving her behind! He gave her a look as if to say she should have stayed where she was, but didn't say anything. He knew how stubborn she could be.

Down near the water's edge, frost rimmed the banks of the lake. The dark water, glowing with the light from the aurora above, lapped the muddy shore. Bjorn stopped about ten feet back, Helen a half-step behind. The figure - what looked like a man in a thick cloak, hood pulled up - didn't move, didn't speak.

Finally, Bjorn called out, "Hej! What are you doing?"

The figure didn't move. Helen peered at him as Bjorn edged closer. Tall and broad, it had to be a man. But, the cloak, wrapped entirely around him, was oddly lumpy. It was covered in frost, icicles hanging from the hood and sleeves, where a dark tendril emerged, like a snake's tongue testing the air.

"Bjorn!" Helen's reached out, but missed his sleeve by millimetres. "Something's wrong!"

"It's fine, keep back."

Helen's breath was fogging up the air in front of her, chest pumping with fear. She couldn't go forward, but she couldn't bring herself to runaway either. The aurora was getting brighter and the lake looked like it was on fire.

Just as Bjorn had reached out a hand to check that the figure was really a person, and not some sick prank, it spoke.

"We have waited!" it's voice was muffled, like it was coming from underwater. "The light is here. Now we rise!"

Bjorn had had enough. He lunged forward and jerked the figure's cloak, pulling it off. Underneath was a bulbous mass. A roiling mass of tentacles, covered in a near-solid membrane. Like a giant anemone wearing a placenta suit, so it could survive on land. Bjorn yelled and stumbled, falling on to his hands and scrambling through the mud to get away.

"Sjӧodjur!" he screamed, before the thing, poked a tentacle through its mucus shield and wrapped it around his ankle. "Helen, run!"

She didn't listen. Screaming like the valkyries of old, Helen took his outstretched hand and pulled, while the monster slowly dragged them closer. Despite the sucking mud and the weight of two adults - and Bjorn was six foot eight! - the monster was winning. It was only a matter of time. And it appeared to have eons.

Hours later, Helen was tired and Bjorn was pale. She was certain the creature's tentacles had venomous suckers underneath. Though she gritted her teeth and hung on, fingers numb, she couldn't see a way to save her Bjorn. Behind the monstrous squid, the lake was boiling, huge bubbles rising to the surface and bursting, releasing thousands of black spores. She looked down to see them floating in the green froth, tiny versions of the dark cephalopod before her. How long had they been waiting, in the depths of the lake, for the right time to spawn?

Bjorn was very still, no longer resisting the steady pull of the monster. He was so heavy, so very heavy in her arms. The tears on Helen's cheeks had frozen and her hands would not unclench. She was trapped. It was done. 

With a sigh, Helen relaxed and, looking up at the brightest aurora she had ever seen, let herself be pulled along with Bjorn into the embrace of the dark herald. Inside it was burning hot. She could feel herself slipping away, becoming part of the creature. But her mind was opening up - she saw ancient empires and doomed cities, beings from beyond the stars swimming in the hydrogen clouds of gaseous planets from across the dark spaces of the universe. Was this dying? Or was this being born?

...

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