For a long moment, Benny and Carlos stood there, surveying the lobby, so familiar, but with parts rearranged, clothes strewn across the floor, an unsettling volume of spattered blood. They had not quite come out from underneath the overhanging second floor yet -- and it was only going to be a matter of moments before Benny's strength would totally fail and he would go sprawling across the floor, causing even more damage to himself -- but the violence of the occurrence couldn't be missed, even at this distance.
Carlos's mind instinctively tried to piece it all together... someone had been traumatically injured near the foot of the stairs and fallen, and then either gotten up or had been picked up and had been carried -- still trailing blood, but otherwise in a situation very similar to his and his co-worker's -- through the huge broken window at the front of the lobby. The rearranged furniture must have come from some kind of scuffle. Between the injurer and the rest of those present, maybe?
If he had been by himself, Carlos would have moved slowly out into the room, and assimilated all the evidence more closely. But as it was, he was carrying almost two hundred extra pounds of semi-sentient weight, and couldn't move smoothly or without specific purpose. For now, he had to be content with whatever he could glean while on the way to getting Benny someplace soft to lie down.
"Come on," he said to Benny, unaware if the man was fully conscious or not. "Let's get you to that couch. Then we can relax for a minute." Of course, he had no intention of Benny getting back up without the help of medical professionals. The two men were resuming their two-and-a-half legged stumble forward, and Carlos was just starting to evaluate the easiest path through the random piles of fallen clothes, when he sensed a shadow passing in front of the now-open window at the lobby's far end.
He looked directly at it, then turned his attention back to analyzing the floor, then paused. What he had observed finally sank in, and he turned his head back up fully expecting for the shape to be gone... or to have it resolve itself into what it actually was, rather than what he had thought he had seen.
It was still there, just as he had seen it the first time: the silhouette of an idealized human form, so sleekly shaped that it might not have been wearing any clothing, with a wide array spiky antlers protruding from either side of its head. It stood just outside the broken window, its lower legs and feet lost from sight.
"What...?" Carlos asked incredulously, and the thing tilted its head slightly. If the antlers hadn't magnified the movement, Carlos wouldn't have thought it heard him. But it did. It crouched the tiniest bit, preparing to step or jump over the low sill and come into the room with them.
It would be in the room with them. Carlos's mind revolted against this thought, instinctively understanding that was the worst possible thing that could happen at that moment. He immediately halted his and Benny's forward progress, threw his mental and physical gears into reverse. He had no idea what he was thinking, that one man carrying another man could outrun this lithe being, who was already nimbly stepping over the threshold and striding across the floor toward them. All he knew was the encompassing sense of revulsion he had at being in its presence, and that he wanted to be out of its sight.
He half-turned, trying to swing Benny around to give them some extra momentum. He could already hear the shadow-man's feet clacking (clacking?) on the floor behind them, gaining. Carlos turned them back the way they came, down the hallway toward the roofless restaurant. He already knew it was too far, there was no way they could make it to the broken double doors by the time whatever this was could reach them -- and at the same time found it mortally important that this not happen.
Benny was so heavy, it felt as if he were pulling him in an entirely other direction -- and then he noticed that he actually was. His injured friend had swiveled his head away from Carlos, and toward the unornamented door leading under the main stairway. It led to the tiny room where Harmon lived, which they'd noticed when they first entered the lobby. Carlos took about a tenth of a second to wonder whether Benny was acting consciously, another tenth to consider this new option, and then pivoted that way as well. Whoever it was behind them was going to catch up -- this was an indisputable fact -- and when that happened, Carlos thought he'd rather have a thin door between them than to be caught in the open, in the middle of a dark hallway.
The odd clacking sounds didn't increase in speed, although they did ramp up in volume... if Carlos had to guess, he would think that the man behind them was starting to *bound* after them, unhurried, like that cartoon skunk who always ended up catching whatever scrambling prey he was after.
Benny was reaching for the doorknob to Harmon's quarters, but there wasn't time. Carlos swung around and grabbed it himself, twisting it before Benny's weight slammed him into the door itself, pushing an exasperated "Unngh!" from Carlos, his shoulder taking the brunt of their combined force. The side-by-side pair of men bounced erratically off the door, and it was only Carlos's iron grip on the knob that kept them from tumbling right into the leaping thing's path.
The door popped open, stopping when it rammed against two of Carlos's toes. He cried out again, and used his pained frustration to basically throw Benny into the gap that had appeared. He dove in after, making a grab for the inner knob at the same time. His fingers somehow found purchase, and he yanked the door closed behind them. Against every estimation he could have made up until that point, the lock clicked.
In the instant Carlos had to swing his head around to watch as the person pursuing them (although he doubted that was really what it was) opened the door and finished whatever job it had come to do, he noticed that the small under-stairs room wasn't as cramped or dirty as he had assumed it would be. Harmon's quarters were fully ten feet square, although the downward slope of the stairs cut a sizeable diagonal chunk out of the ceiling. Still, there were amenities he would expect to see in anyone's room -- a simple cot against the wall where the ceiling was lowest, a pair of dressers and haphazardly filled bookshelves lining the others. A shaded lamp atop one of them threw warm light across the wood of the walls and floor, which were polished and lacquered, the exact same shade as the lobby itself.
Carlos's attention was drawn to the doorknob he had just let go of, most notably the way it was now extending out into the room. It wasn't just the metal that was stretching, but the surrounding wood as well, melting toward him like a burning photograph. The knob itself didn't turn, although he could hear something vaguely animal scrabbling against it on the other side. Other bits of the door and adjoining wall did the same thing, pressing inward and receding, in two or three places at a time.
Then, almost hesitantly, one single place started to flow outward from the wall. This time, it was clear what Carlos was looking at...
A hand, five fingers splayed, trying to push its way through from the other side.
-8.10-
Benny was trying so hard. Trying to stay awake, to stay conscious, to stay living. But he was so, so tired. He was aware enough to appreciate everything Carlos was doing for him (even the improvised stovetop cauterization of his head; he had no idea how bad the wound had been, but it must have been bad for his friend to take such drastic measures), and was still trying to help their escape in any way they could.
At least he had something now to help him focus. It had called to him from its spot over the fireplace in the restaurant, and was now clutched protectively in his hand. The Deertail logo was solid, cold, exactly what he needed to keep himself -- which, after his accident, had never felt more feverish or insubstantial -- stuck together. The metal triangle was almost literally an anchor. If he hadn't heard it thrumming like a tuning fork there on the wall, or if Carlos hadn't indulged him and made a detour from their tortured path to the lobby, he was sure his soul would have floated away by now.
Not only that, but they would have been a lot farther out into the lobby when the figure with the antlers appeared at the broken window. It would have been much closer, and they wouldn't have made it back into this little room before the Qoloni caught them. And yes, he knew exactly what the thing was, knew its name, and even thought he knew where it came from. He had seen it before. Ironically, right in this very room. Except that now it was alive, and real, and trying to get in. It couldn't, though. It was trying, but it seemed like even the thinnest physical barrier in this world was too much for its extra-natural body to overcome. Benny thought he might know why that was, too.
He had fallen on his side on the floor, knocking his already violated skull against the wooden boards, and was untold minutes away from being able to gather the strength to get up, or even roll over. If the Qoloni found a way in, then he would just have to accept that he might not get the chance to, ever. If it got through, he would hold up the Deertail logo, to see if it might act as a talisman; it might turn out to be the cross to this thing's vampire. He doubted it, but it was the only hope he had.
Carlos was watching the bulging door and wall with fascination, his eyes wild and uncomprehending. Benny half-wondered if he would be reacting that way too, if he hadn't been knocked so hard into this semi-conscious state. He certainly wouldn't have made the connection that made the thing's name plain to him. That had been, what? Over a year and a half ago since he had first seen its picture? He wondered if it was still here. If they had any time left at all, he could at least warn Carlos, show him what it was they were running from.
He managed to raise his aching head and turn it toward the bookshelves. He tried to focus on the volumes there, but he hadn't really been able to do that ever since the white fist had punched through the kitchen window and shattered him. All he could make out were crazily tilted stacks of paperback spines. The letters refused to behave, all their different colors and fonts and sizes swimming around, none of them readable.
In a surprisingly short amount of time, Carlos had seemed to accept what he was looking at. The Qoloni had been pushing at various places along the door and wall, trying new methods of entry. Once Carlos had sat with his back against one of the walls, elbows resting on his knees, watching it work, his eyes became less and less wide with fear each passing minute, transforming into the focus of a war commander studying the battlefield. The only time he jumped a little was when the Qoloni pressed its horned head against the wood of the doorjamb, and that was only because its antlers stuck almost halfway across the length of the little room. Maybe it had been hoping to tear through the impossibly warped wood, but it hadn't worked. Whatever power this thing had to bend reality, it couldn't entirely break it.
Even as they were being threatened by this otherworldly force, Benny was glad for the break in the action. Still, he ached all over; the large piece of glass that at the time felt like it had split his skull in two was hardly the only source. He guessed that he had been battered about as much as a human being could be without actually breaking anything, although he wondered how he would know if he had, through this haze of pervasive hurt that covered him, draining away his mental and physical strength.
He had to show Carlos what he was thinking about. But the words on the book spines wouldn't stop swimming around, and Benny couldn't move much, or speak. He wondered what kind of nerves had been severed by that flying spear of glass that made it so hard to do things that were so simple before. He couldn't even shake his head to clear it.
Carlos kept studying the Qoloni as it tried various methods to break through the wall. First, it swung its antlers from side to side, trying to slash through the abnormally stretched fabric of the wall, then pressed its entire body against it, clearly straining with the effort. None of these tactics made any progress, but it didn't seem likely to give up either. Benny noted that the creature didn't seem to focus on either of them as it made these attempts. This made him believe that it couldn't see through the barrier.
Looking around him, Benny realized he had fallen not far from the simple military-style cot that Harmon spent his nights in. The old man lived in a cramped apartment, but he also made an effort to keep the place nice. Benny had originally noticed this when he had been in here before, invited back for a late-night story trade between two no-longer-young bachelors, after the younger folks had all gone to bed, in pairs and solos.
The room was the same, clearly the way Harmon liked it. The bedclothes were still neatly tucked in, meaning that he had never gone to bed last night. Benny could detect the smell of hair tonic on the perfectly-aligned pillow. He thought of his own messy apartment down in the town, and felt envy. Harmon was a part of the Lodge, was needed here, and lived so simply. Benny thought that if they made it through whatever this was that was happening, he wanted to try to live out his remaining time little more like this.
Another stack of paperbacks stood next to the cot, almost rising to the level of it, clearly situated to be in easy reaching distance of a person lying in it. Benny remembered noticing the narrow, makeshift table when he had been here before, during that late-night confessional that had not been repeated since. When he had asked Harmon about the sheer volume of books he had, Harmon answered:
"If you see something you like, go ahead and take it. I ain't precious about the books themselves. As I see it, if an idea is strong enough for me to remember, I can do it without having the book itself around. I can always find another copy. These are all one that have spoken to me, in some way."
Benny's eyes became focused on the base of that singular stack of books, but this time he was not trying to reach them. He was trying to get his arm to move. The large metal weight at the end of it twitched.
Not far away from Benny but across the room, Carlos continued to watch the shape bending and twisting the room's door far out of true, and then backing off, letting reality snap back into place. The Qoloni's attacks were getting less and less insistent; maybe the thing would eventually give up and head for easier prey.
Benny struggled to move across the floor, the metal Deertail logo in his hand slowly making its way across the polished boards toward the precarious stack. He hoped that he wasn't wrong, and that the books near the bottom were still basically the same as they had been before, effectively being changed from entertainment into furniture, propping up newer acquisitions.
He was disgusted by the way his hand looked, still stained with streaks of his own blood, the strain of moving the weight it carried making the tendons stand out. Mostly, he had never before now realized how old it looked. Using this frustration as fuel for his rebel muscles, Benny thrust his arm forward, only managing to hook the corner of the logo around the closest corner of the bottommost book. Using every last bit of his strength, he jerked his arm to the side along the floor, spinning the whole stack no more than an inch.
For a long moment, Benny thought he had failed. But then, several of the topmost books on the wavering stack began to tip over, and their slide began to drag others along with them. The top portion of the tower tilted past the point of no return, and fell. As they did, they pushed against the bottom half of the stack, forcing it the opposite direction. The result was better than Benny could have hoped for. One half of the books fanned out like dominoes in one direction, the others toward him, most of them showing their covers.
Carlos's head whipped around at the sound, which was a rapid-fire staccato of paperbound corners hitting the wood floor. In reflex, he rhetorically asked, "Benny, what the *fuck*, man?" Then he looked just as quickly back up at the door, to see if the horned thing would come back again. It had been several seconds since its last attempted intrusion, and a few more silent moments seemed to prove that it had moved off. Or it at least wanted them to think that it had.
With the immediate threat gone, Carlos looked with more concern toward Benny. "You all right?" His eyes followed Benny's extended arm and metal logo, the tip of which rested on a book that would have been located only two or three from the bottom when the stack was still intact.
Benny tapped it, patiently, as if he had known it would be there all along. It was one of the books he had almost taken with him when he had spent that late evening shooting the shit with Harmon. At this moment, he was glad he hadn't, because then it wouldn't have been here.
Carlos looked down and picked it up slowly, marveling at it. The same kind of horror that had recently left his eyes returned, mixing now with confusion. "What the...?" he breathed, scanning the cover for an explanation. Benny didn't have one, only knew that what was happening, this strange confluence of reality and fantasy, was important.
The book's cover art featured a dark-haired woman in flowing Renaissance clothing turning in panic away from an ornate, full-length mirror. Its surface, reflecting a twisted version of the woman's fleeing back, was being pushed forward from behind, flowing like quicksilver... into the form of a horned human being.
The name of the book was The Qoloni, by Bruce Casey.
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