The Unwritten

The Unwritten Part XVIa - Tom

Tom was breathing hard as he stared at the closed door leading into the main room of the cabin. He had made it back to the top floor with the door finally before him! For a while he had been doubting that he could make it back. His legs had screamed with the effort but now, he was now so very happy to finally be there. Still, it was a questionable pleasure, he knew.

Carefully, quietly, he listened at the door. Silence, utter silence.

He remembered the cadaver on the other side of that door, against the far wall. Hadn’t anyone come back into the cabin and discovered the dead man yet? Surely by now… slowly and very carefully Tom cracked the door open just a sliver. Air rushed in brushing across his eye, bringing with it a metallic odor which surprised him.

He breathed it in, inadvertently sucking the flavor of the room across his tongue and palate, immediately making him regret it. The flavor, the odor that accosted him was both offensive and fearful. The intensity of what he was sensing did not indicate a single dead man. Closing his mouth he held his breath and stared into the room. His thin vertical line of vision went from floor to ceiling as he moved his head slightly left and right taking it all in.

No movement. Still and silent.

Tom opened the door further and looked inside in complete disbelief. A kerosene lamp had been lit on the wall by the front door. From that light he could see bodies everywhere with black looking fluid all over the place, glistening in spots.

No one, nothing, moved. It was dead still.

Earlier....

Charani slowly opened the door and peeked in, missing her romance and her ward. Behind her were nine of her relatives, all waiting to follow her in close behind. There were a couple of her female cousins, one of her brothers and they were all wondering what had happened to Stevo. She had always been very close to Stevo. They were a tight knit clan, but she and Stevo had always been especially close. Whatever she had wanted he made sure she got it. He was her big brother and never let anyone forget it.

While they were all partying next door at Stefano's house, Stevo had come back in alone to check on Charani’s new "boyfriend". Her new "toy" who she had left strapped to the table top. They had finally come to wonder what had become of Stevo so, mostly drunk, they all wandered over to see what's up.

It was dark inside, so she entered and lit the lamp near the door. Others slowly followed her in. The first thing she noticed was the kitchen table was on its side and near the wall. She looked around at the empty cabin, indicating to a couple of her cousins to check the bedroom and hallway door. The twins were closest and headed to the interior doors. Though only of medium build, these boys had been at it since they were born. They came out of the womb fighting. They had beat the hell out of one another again and again since childhood, and yet the blood was thick between them.

Petsha opened the left bedroom door and looked around, nothing. He closed the door behind him and waited for his brother to reappear. Ferka had entered the other door, walked down to the back room and opened that door. He flicked a lighter, looked around inside the room and then closed the door, walking back to the living room door. Closing that door behind him, he stepped back into the living room and nodded to Petsha, who nodded back. They both looked at Charani and shrugged. No one was around.

Charani looked at the stairwell door. Stefano noticed this and helpfully but hesitantly indicated with his thumb toward the stairwell, watching Charani carefully. Her eyes widened and she shook her head.

“No, I won’t got into that Bengalo place. No one would and if he did, well….” Relieved, he shrugged, at a loss as to what to do next. Stefano too noticed the kitchen table on its side and against the wall, but at an odd angle.

Charani heard a gasp behind her and they both turned to see Tasaria standing off to the side. She was staring at the floor in the living room. Charani took a step over to see what had made her cousin inhale as she had. Only then did she see her brother's corpse on the floor.

Blood drained from her face, her neck muscles got taut, and her breathing increased, her heart beat faster to keep up with the need for more oxygen. She took a couple of more steps closer and in the flickering lantern light she could make out the shattered configuration of his face after having several interdimensional metal Hell darts flung through it at high velocity.

Stefano walked over to the kitchen table. Peering over the side of it into the darker area between it and the wall, which it was at an odd angle to, he smiled, stood upright and turned to looked at Charani. He was about to say something when a scream from her froze him in his place and chilled his blood.

The scream had welled up within Charani until she could no longer contain it. Then it burst out of her. She screamed her pain and her anger at the ceiling, then around the room in general, locking eyes with various other familiar sets of eyes which shrunk from her intensity. Her arms went wide as she looked for someone to kill but there was no one present who could satiate such desires. She looked around for her “toy” and realized finally, that he had to die. And die a horrible death.

It was during this that something caught Stefano’s attention up in the ceiling. Something, not in the ceiling to be more correct, but all along it. The ceiling was all black, not the usual lighter brown or painted surface they were all so used to. It was so black that you couldn’t even tell how high the ceiling was.

But the ceiling had never been black.

The mural was gone, replaced by a roiling darkness. Reaching up to touch the ceiling, he heard crackling sounds as his fingers neared the fluid darkness. He noticed that parts of it were beginning to drip down in places. Looking around he saw that above each one of them in the room, there was now a black fluid dripping down toward each of them, in a somehow solid and connected fashion. His mind had no correlation to attach what he was seeing to. He had no idea what it was, and yet it fascinated him.

As it touched someone their eyes widened in a very unrealistic way. Charani saw Stefano and followed his gaze, noticing what was happening and it cut off her screams, abruptly. She backed up against the wall, terrified of what was happening all around her. She saw Stefano touch the dripping darkness and what happened next was to say the least, extreme and not in or of anything she had ever seen in nature.

Having realized that there was some of it coming down to him, too, Stefano had reached up for it, wanting to feel it, wanting to rub it between his fingers. Expecting an oily substance, it felt instead more like fine leather. His eyes grew instantly wide, snapping open like he was being charged with thousands of volts of electricity.

The experience brought along with it flashes of bizarre scenes of violence. He saw things he had never even thought of before, though a few he had done himself. A few of the more minor atrocities, anyway. His crotch lit up with excitement, his chest expanded, heartbeat quickened, lungs took in deeper breaths as voluminous amounts of adrenalin pumped out and flowed through his system.

The imagery he was seeing filled his mind and body. It overtook him, gave him directions, motivations, intense desires. He felt a lust for blood that streamed down his torso to his crotch and from his crotch back up to his neck and out to his arms. It caressed his tongue, tweaked his brain into near mental orgasms of pleasure and gave him an inability to satiate a peculiar thirst. A thirst to maim and kill, to inflict pain and when the pain stopped simply to inflict damage and he knew, if he did it right, there would be a divine explosion of pleasure waiting for him.

Stefano looked around. He could see the others were feeling this too and there was an unspoken agreement in their feelings and desires. A snap of energy passed over the group in the cabin, they all stiffened, save for Charani who had yet to be touched by the Darkness, and then, they attacked one another with a speed and power that was frightening to behold.