Shadowland Anthology

Shadowland

By Toby Tate

Published by Toby Tate at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 by Toby Tate

Cover Artwork © 2011 by Toby Tate

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Website: http://www.tobytatestories.com

e-mail: tobygtate@yahoo.com

Table of Contents:

In the Blood

Loose Ends

Finding Sasha

Worlds Apart

Gray Area

Shocker

The Muffin Man

Shadowland

Excerpt from the upcoming novel, Creature

In the Blood

Petty Officer Hunter Singleton sat on the corrugated steel deck of the boiler room at the bottom of the USS Harlan County, wondering how and when—and if—the nightmare would end. Sweat stung his eyes, but exhaustion had set in to the point that he could not even raise an arm to wipe it off, so he simply blinked it away, flinging tiny beads of moisture through the air like droplets of rain. His blue dungaree uniform was soaked, the temperature in the bleak, gray room stifling hot. The noise from the engines was muffled from his hearing protection, yet his own breathing thundered in his ears, and his heart beat as if he had just run the New York Marathon. Though he couldn’t see it, he knew the thing was watching him from the other side of the door, waiting for the next move, as patient as a lion stalking its prey.

Next to the haggard sailor and under his trembling hand was an M-16 automatic rifle, which he had procured from the armory only hours ago. More of a security blanket than anything else, Hunter knew the gun was about as effective against it as a rubber band shooter or a barrage of spit wads.

He turned and looked across the steel plated deck at his dead shipmate, Dave Saunders. Boiler Tech second class, family man, work center supervisor, friend—now just a pallid, bloodless torso staring at him with accusing eyes that said, You’re alive and I’m dead and who’s going to tell my family?

Hunter could feel the bile rise in his throat, and he reached over with a booted foot and with all the strength he could muster, gave the corpse a push until it flopped over on one side and he could no longer see its eyes or hear its accusing tone. He had met the sailor’s family once, a wife and two children. God, he did not know how he could bring himself to look into those little girls’ eyes and tell them their daddy was dead, killed by a monster, a thing that had once been human, that had once been a friend and a shipmate.

How long had it been since he had eaten? Probably days, but Hunter had no appetite. He started to notice his thirst. Luckily, the fresh water evaporator was in the same room, and he had but to open a tank cover and take what he needed. He wondered if it was day or night outside. He didn't know. Keeping the generator running for lights and air conditioning was the hardest part. It was in a separate compartment from the boiler and evaporator, so the noise wasn't too bad. He knew it would soon be time to take a reading and check the oil level on the generator's diesel engine. Maintaining a schedule and performing mundane tasks kept him sane, yet fear made it difficult for him to move.

He closed his eyes, made a silent resolution, said a silent prayer, and slowly opened his eyes again. The sailor feebly held the M-16 as he pushed himself up off the deck, sliding with his back against the bulkhead. Would the thing hear him moving? It had seemed to know his every move, his every thought over the last few days, almost as if there were some psychic connection. Hunter didn't know or understand how that could be, only that it was. He could feel it buzzing around in his head like an insect, probing his mind, playing on his fears.

He stood propped up against the wall, gathering strength to go into the next compartment, do what had to be done to the generator, and get some water out of the evap tank. His dark hair was matted from the humidity; his lanky body ached from too many adrenaline rushes. A beard grew on his face, something the petty officer would have enjoyed under normal circumstances. He raised himself from the wall, and began to shuffle toward the next compartment.

Before he could take two steps, a dent appeared in the door on the other side of the compartment he currently occupied, making a sound like a muffled gong. A shudder from the force of the impact rippled through the deck.

It was pissed off again.

Hunter stopped in his tracks and looked across the room to his right. It wasn't an unusual occurrence, but it rattled him just the same. The thing let out a deafening, guttural roar that reverberated through the ship like an echo in a canyon. Hunter winced. Instead of running as his mind screamed at him to do, he inexplicably turned his body and walked toward the door, the small round glass portal darkened so there was nothing but blackness inside, but he knew it was watching.

The breathing of the monster reminded him of the respiration of a large animal, like a bull or maybe a rhino. Hunter started to imagine himself with an elephant gun and a pith helmet, but brought his mind back to reality and the feel of the M-16 in his hand. This was his jungle: the cold steel environment of the machine. His boots clunked hollowly on the deck plates as he walked warily toward the dark window. The air smelled of diesel, the generators whining with what eventually becomes white noise to a pit snipe, another name for sailors who spent their days in the engine rooms of Navy ships.

When he was a foot away from the door, he stopped. A rivulet of sweat trickled down his cheek.

Behind the six-inch circular window, about five feet away, Hunter saw yellow eyes that almost glowed in the dark peering at him from the other side of the door. He was thankful that eyes were all he could see, because the face that he had seen up close made his stomach turn with revulsion. He remembered the white, nearly translucent skin and the arteries and veins visible beneath it and other things too hideous to recall. As if sensing Hunter’s terror, one of its slimy tentacle-like appendages slid across the window, leaving a streak like a slug trail in its path. It turned its enormous head, and in the shaft of light that filtered into the compartment he could see rows of glistening teeth. It was an alien face, and yet, somehow it was familiar.

Looks like it's just you and me now, big guy, Hunter said. The monster seemed to be listening, as if it understood. For all Hunter knew, maybe it did. It was still at least partially human and Hunter knew it had memories of those times, but its mind had been affected by…whatever had taken over. It was no longer a him and Hunter knew he couldn’t afford to think of it as him. Like any enemy, it had to be dehumanized.

It was the only way.

Hunter found himself wishing that he would just wake up to find it had all been a nightmare, that he would be asleep in his rack and find that none of this had happened. But he wasn’t that lucky.

Only days before he had begun to change, the sailor had told an insane story about a woman he'd met at a bar who had slipped him some Spanish fly, then taken him to her house in town, where they proceeded to fuck for hours like wild animals. According to the sailor, it was the best sex he'd ever had.

When he'd gone back to the ship, the next day he'd found a wart on his penis. Sailors were known to be promiscuous, and warts were pretty common, so he hadn't thought much about it.

Then the wart turned green and multiplied, and soon covered his genitals. The young man was not happy.

The sailor left the ship on a duty day, which was already a strike against him, then took the duty van—strike two—and proceeded to find the house of his previous week's date.

After he practically knocked her door down, the petite woman reluctantly opened it, and stood staring daggers at him. She told him she was a witch, and to get the hell out or else. He laughed defiantly, and called her a disease-carrying whore, demanding to know exactly what disease she was transmitting. The answer was not what he expected.

The sailor said that she had told a story about being raped years ago by several American sailors who had had too much to drink, and too little sense. Because she was a known prostitute, the police refused to do anything. To make matters worse, she became pregnant and had an abortion. The woman never forgot, and never forgave, plotting her revenge in the time since. The man standing before her was the unlucky recipient of that revenge: an old gypsy curse.

The sailor, stunned by the revelation, told her he was sorry about what happened, but she could not judge the entire U.S. Navy by the actions of a few men. His words fell like seeds on stony ground. The woman looked at him with eyes of hate-filled fire, laughed demonically and said he would change, that the change would be painful, that he would become a monster and destroy everyone aboard his ship. She said he could never die.

She also uttered a word: Cacoethes. Or, in English, an obstinate disease.

The words flew like sparks, both Spanish and English, and soon fists followed.

A man who had been in the next room called the police, and the sailor ended up back at the ship, after much pleading by the Navy with the Spanish authorities. The next day, the ship left port.

Hunter had heard the story as the sailor told it to him from his cell in the brig, and he thought of the cursed Lon Chaney in The Wolf Man. Of course, no one believed the part about becoming a monster—it was just the ramblings of a gullible sailor filled with too much liquor.

Yet in the days that followed, the man did change. He quickly became more and more psychotic as the warts began to cover his lower body, then his upper body like a second skin. The doctor who had come aboard from the flagship, the USS Saipan, was completely astounded and baffled by what he saw, and suggested they fly the sailor to his ship and on to the nearest facility.

The next day, in the middle of the Atlantic, the hurricane hit. They were in for a ride, and there was no chance of outrunning it.

The crew continued to watch the prisoner in awe, taking turns gawking at the freak show through the brig's glass portal. He thrashed about in his cell, screaming in pain like a recovering morphine addict as his body transformed. Pinkish tentacles began to sprout from various places like nightmarish arms, reaching out through the bars, testing their strength; the ears grew larger and pointed, like the ears of a huge wolf; he seemed to grow extra teeth, as his mouth increased in size to accommodate, and the teeth were like those of a crocodile—long and razor-sharp; his eyes grew larger and yellow like the eyes of some overgrown lizard, yet filled with intelligence and cunning.

When the