Because it would.
And then it did.
It came through the wall as easily as smoke through a window grating, insubstantial and ghostly, yet gradually gaining solidity. And at that point, a ghost carrying its head tucked under its arm would have been welcome. Because this… well, this was something else.
St. Ours knew it was one of those things from Hut #6 and the sight of it filled him with a terror that was dream-like and blank.
It was obscene to see it in motion, to see it gliding forth on those thick and muscular snakelike tentacles at its base. It should have been sluggish, but it moved with a marked fluidity, grace, and ease. Its body was like some oblong barrel, the flesh gray and oily and ribbed, some sort of wriggling parasitic podia hanging from the lower quadrant. When it got within five feet of St. Ours, it opened up its wings, almost seeming to inflate them, fanning them out like the collar of a frilled lizard. It sounded like wet umbrellas being snapped open.
St. Ours could see a black vein networking in those wings. They looked membranous and rubbery. He tried to scream and could not. He was horrified and sickened, knowing it was not truly there physically, could not possibly be, yet smelling its stink which was like a poisoned carcass slowly decaying on a hot beach.
It stood before him, towering over him, wings fanned out like the sails of a hang-glider, stinking and evil and offensive. Those appendages at its middle were reaching out for him, quivering, looking much like branching dendrites and synapses of a brain cell. But the worst part was that starfish-shaped head with those glaring eyes like red glass. These, more than anything, are what made St. Ours start shooting, seeing those slugs pass harmlessly through the creature and punch into the concrete wall behind it.
The thing allowed him this one act of defiance and then those eyes stood out at the end of their stalks, looked at him and in him, showing him the pain of refusal, of raging against its kind. He heard a high, shrill, almost musical piping in his head like some distorted and trilling antique harmonium. And suddenly he was nothing and no one. His mind was bleached white and he was just a doll forged from warm plastic with a beating heart and staring eyes. He fell down before the thing, whimpering and giggling, and there was an intense wave of agony in his skull as his brain went to bubbling hot wax and his eyes exploded from their sockets and splashed down his face like wet vomit.
And then the thing began to fade, pulling away from the broken and sightless creature before it.
And back near the door, the spell broken, Rutkowski and the remaining Glory Boys began to scream.
24
Like the wreckage left by some horrendous traffic accident, just about everyone at the station came by to look upon the remains of Tommy St. Ours. They bustled in the corridor, poking their noses through the doorway and asking questions and whispering and then leaving as quick as they could get away. St. Ours was like some horror kept in a jar at a roadside carnival and people had to see what was left just to say that they had, that such a thing could be. Because most of them had never gotten a good look at Meiner sitting in that chair out in Hut #6 with his eyes sprayed over his face like slime, but they weren’t going to miss this.
Few actually saw St. Ours, though.
After five, then six and seven people circled in like turkey buzzards, Dr. Sharkey threw a white sheet over him like a corpse in an old movie. What more could really be done? Later, they would wrap him up in a tarp and ship him out to join Meiner in the cold house where was also kept the station’s meat and perishables, but for now at least they didn’t need to look upon him. So, yes, only a handful saw his grim cadaver, but to listen to them later, you wouldn’t have thought so. For they all had stories to tell that seemed to get more gruesome with the re-telling.
And then, after a time, there was only Sharkey and Hayes and La-Hune.
“What’re you going to log as the cause of death?” LaHune said, gently touching a great red knob over his left eye where St. Ours had hit him.
She looked over at him like maybe he was kidding, making some sick joke, but she saw he was dead serious. “Well, I’ll have to do a post, won’t I? But, chances are, I’ll be writing it up as another cerebral hemorrhage.”
“Yes,” LaHune said. “Yes.”
Hayes felt sorry for the guy… a little bit anyway, because nobody should’ve had to put up with being slugged and then tied up, but the guy just didn’t seem to be in touch with mother reality here. He knew what killed St. Ours, just as they all knew it, but he wouldn’t admit it.
Christ. An hour ago, Hayes had been sleeping alongside Sharkey and then Cutchen was at her door saying there had been another death and now he was here, looking at this and listening to LaHune.
Which was worse?
Of course, this death had a lot of drama tied to it. Rutkowski and the boys had gone screaming into the community room and the dorms beyond, banging their fists against doors, wanting help or salvation. Maybe both. That was how Cutchen and some of the others had untied LaHune and got a look at St. Ours. Now Rutkowski and his Glory Boys were sedated, because none of them were sure what had happened. They were raving about ghosts and monsters, saying that one of the Old Ones was traipsing about camp.
“I don’t think, at this point, that we need to be so concerned with how St. Ours died, but with what killed him,” Sharkey said. “Can we agree on that?”
“Well, yes, we need to know that. If you have any ideas, I’m listening.”
Sharkey just stared at him like he was an idiot.
Hayes said, “Doc’s right, chief. Don’t matter what happened, so much as who did it.”
“If you have any ideas…”
“Oh for chrissake, LaHune, what the fuck’s wrong with you?” he wanted to know. “You know same as me what happened. Those things out there… Gates’ fucking fossils… they aren’t exactly dead as you and I understand dead. Their minds are still active and if we don’t do something about shutting those minds down again, then who knows how many of us’ll be left come spring.”
LaHune swallowed. “I’m not about to accept any of that nonsense. There’s simply no real proof. I expect that from Rutkowski… he’s hysterical, but not you, Hayes.”
“Oh, really? You think because they’ve been frozen a million years or whatever that they can’t wake up again?”
“No, I don’t.”
“All right, then. We’ll say it’s not the frozen ones, okay? Maybe it was them down in that lake, LaHune, because I can tell you that those bastards are not anywhere near dead. So let’s not fuck around here, all right? I know you saw the videotape by now. You know what’s down there.”
LaHune looked uncomfortable. “Yes, I’ve seen the tape. But I tend to think what’s down in that lake and what’s up here are two different situations.”
Before Sharkey could hope to stop him, Hayes grabbed LaHune and slammed him up against the wall and with enough force to knock a few things off their shelves. “Listen to me, you pretentious fucking fool,” Hayes said. “Those things are physically dead, but psychically very much alive. They killed St. Ours because he was going to burn those bodies up and those things don’t want that yet. He was dangerous to them, so they squashed him. Those minds out there… I don’t think they’ve cycled up all the way yet, but when they do, when they fucking do, we’re all toast and you know it. If anybody’s left in this camp by spring, I can guarantee you of one thing, they might look like men, but what’s going to be in their heads will be anything but.”